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Shawn Buckley

So our next witness today is Kyrianna Reimer. Kyrianna, can you please state for us your full name, spelling your first and last name for the record?

Kyrianna Reimer

My name is Kyrianna Joy Reimer, K-Y-R-I-A-N-N-A, Reimer, R-E-I-M-E-R.

Shawn Buckley

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

Kyrianna Reimer

I do.

Shawn Buckley

Right now you work in financing. But when COVID hit you were a nursing student trying to work your way through to get a nursing degree. And my understanding is you’d like to go back. Can you share with us basically how the COVID experience for you unfolded as you were trying to get through the school of nursing?

Kyrianna Reimer

So in September 2021 I returned for fall semester, third year. We were told at that time that the vaccine was highly recommended. We didn’t have a due date that we had to be vaccinated by, but this quickly changed. And throughout that semester, as AHS [Alberta Health Services] changed their policy, so the school changed theirs as well. As that came up, the date I remember the most was October 14th, we were supposed to have our first jab by.

Shawn Buckley

And my understanding is at that time you were actually seriously entertaining getting the shot, but your opinion changed. Can you speak to us about?

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, I’d considered getting it because I really believed that nursing was where I was supposed to be. That was something I’d spent a lot of time thinking and praying about, and it had led me to the conclusion that this was where I needed to be.

So I was going to get the vaccine so I could continue my studies. But as I reflected on years I’d spent in nursing, certain principles came up. One was the ethical morality surrounding the current code of ethics, which says that a patient may not be coerced into taking a medical directive. When a nurse is receiving a vaccine or a jab, whatever you want to call it, at that time, they’re considered a patient. To be coerced into receiving it, it goes against the current code of ethics, undermining the ethical standards in addition to the scientific standards, as outlined in what we had studied during our microbiology course.

Generally, a vaccine takes five years minimum to be released to the public. This one shouldn’t have been released so fast, obviously.

Shawn Buckley

Right. So the speed kind of spooked you. I’m trying to understand what you’re saying about the code of ethics. So the nursing code of ethics requires that a patient have full consent for it to actually be ethical to then administer a treatment, such as a vaccine. But you found yourself in a situation where something was being imposed on you. And that, actually, violated the code of ethics that nurses are supposed to comply with. Did I kind of get that right?

Kyrianna Reimer

That is correct because it wasn’t an optional thing. There was coercion to receive it or drop out of the program, which costs both financially and as far as time goes, whoever decides to stand up for their rights in that.

Shawn Buckley

Right. My understanding is you actually had a project where you had to write a letter on a topic, and you chose this ethics issue as your topic.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah. Um.

Shawn Buckley

And you smile. So it is a bit of a cute story. Can you tell us about that?

Kyrianna Reimer

The project was to write to a member of the government regarding an issue that was affecting the healthcare system. So I decided to write on this one.

Shawn Buckley

Okay. So it was a broad, broad assignment. Students were allowed to pick their own topic, so it wasn’t meant to be topic-specific. You were able to pick your topic, but it was to write to a politician on a healthcare issue, and so likely it was to look at how you would address it.

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Was it an exercise in teaching nurses to be advocates on health issues? I’m just curious what the purpose was.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, that was the idea. It was to be an advocate for patients and be actively involved with the government to support moral health practices and good health practices at the governmental level.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, so you picked an obvious topic on advocating for patients because here you were actually experiencing that very issue yourself. So I imagine that the professor that graded your paper was very fascinated and pleased with the current topic.

Kyrianna Reimer

No. No, that was not what happened. I received a poor mark on that paper with a statement that said, “Please don’t write about personal subjects.”

When I asked my teacher later on and reviewed with her about it, she compared holding my opinion on the COVID vaccine with oral hygiene, stating that she said of herself, “If I decided I shouldn’t brush my teeth, I couldn’t go and tell my patients you can’t brush your teeth. Because we have literature that supports that this is good for the health. And the governing bodies above us also dictate that this is good for our health. So that the governing bodies have dictated that this is a healthy procedure, we can’t speak against them.”

My prof was a nurse.

Shawn Buckley

So in effect, you are being told that to advocate for a patient, you basically have to advocate for whatever the government line is, which seems to me, and you can comment, to totally undermine the purpose of writing to a politician. You’re basically saying, I support the government’s position. So okay.

Now there was something else that caught your attention and led you not to be vaccinated. I understand you were concerned about basically the treatment that was being meted out to other treatments.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, I took issue with the testing of the vaccine just because during our earlier courses we had been told that it takes five-plus years for a vaccine, or even regular medicine, to be released to the public in most cases. It seemed odd that we were accepting this one so blindly so early on in the testing process. This went against the scientific standards that I thought nursing stood for. So both the ethical and scientific standards were lost, making nursing seem like a pretty pointless profession.

Shawn Buckley

Right. Now, you were making efforts to bring your position forward to the College of Nursing to see if they would grant you an exemption or change the mandate. How did that go?

Kyrianna Reimer

At first, there were a number of exchanges of emails. I asked them about their date because they were enforcing an earlier date than AHS originally. I pointed out that this was illegal because they were, in fact, enforcing their own rules, which went against my rights.

To this, as AHS changed their policy, they continued to move backwards and give me more and more time, so I was able to finish that semester. However, later on in January, I wrote to them because AHS had once again changed their standards. I had been held back for a class for that semester because I wasn’t seen fit to enter the clinical placement.

When I realized this, I contacted them, and they told me that there wasn’t anything that they could do about it because they would put the AHS mandates across the board for all of their clinical placements. At this time, I was in community placement, which we had several that were not AHS facilities.

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But the College was enforcing the AHS requirements across the board. I served two of my teachers with notices of liability and received an answer in return.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, and so can you explain for us what a notice of liability is?

Kyrianna Reimer

The notice of liability was basically a statement saying that you’re enforcing these medical directives that go against my rights as a Canadian citizen both on Charter rights and freedoms as well as ethical standards for healthcare practitioners and professionals. And so, I had two of those sent out to two of the nursing profs there.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, so basically you were trying to give them notice that the actions they were taking were violating what you thought were fundamental rights for Canadians at the time. My understanding is that basically they took the opinion that what you were doing was misconduct.

Kyrianna Reimer

That’s correct. I was given a letter of misconduct threatening that they would suspend me as a student at Red Deer College because of my actions.

Shawn Buckley

And Kyrianna, I’ll just let you know that I did receive the copy of that, and we will make it an exhibit [Exhibits RE-8 and RE-8a] so that both the commissioners and the public can see how they responded. And we will also make that notice of liability an exhibit [exhibit number unavailable] so that that can be part of the record going forward.

Kyrianna Reimer

Thank you.

Shawn Buckley

So you basicallyÑ December 2021, found yourself removed from the nursing program.

Kyrianna Reimer

I was permitted to continue with an asynchronous online course, but my clinical placements were cancelled. This happened very suddenly, and I did everything I could to try and get back in, including contacting members of our local government and reaching out to some of the facilities in person.

<b>Shawn Buckley</b>

Right, and that didn’t work very well, did it at first?

Kyrianna Reimer

Neither one worked.

Shawn Buckley

Okay. So how long was it before you were able to participate again?

Kyrianna Reimer

Well, the asynchronous course I was able to complete for the winter term, but I wasn’t permitted to return to studies until the fall just because of the way the nursing courses are laid out. You have to follow a pretty strict schedule. It’s not like a pretty regular one where you get to choose your classes each semester. So I was held back for a whole year.

Shawn Buckley

Right. Now I want to go to a couple of specific things that you experienced. My understanding is that during one of your practicums you had to take a COVID test for a person who had been admitted at night. Can you just share with us what was happening?

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, so we had a patient who was admitted the night before, and I was on the morning shift. When I came in, they told me that one of the things I needed to do was take a COVID test for this person, which I did. Once I completed the COVID tests, we were told that this person had to be moved from the room where they currently were.

So we moved them and their stuff into a separate room where they were isolated and removed all of the items that were disposable within the room and did a full sanitization of the room. There was another patient in the bed who had slept there all night. They were neither tested nor moved, and that didn’t seem to be a problem.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, so that just seemed to be an example of a silly reaction. Obviously, this patient tested positive, but they don’t test the other person in the room.

Kyrianna Reimer

The other patient, we hadn’t even gotten the test back.

Shawn Buckley

Right. Now, there was some messaging about the hospital you were at being full capacity. Can you speak to us about this?

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, we were told that it was full capacity. In the wards where I was, a third to a half of the rooms had one bed removed. Usually it’s a double capacity room, so you’d have two beds within each room. And we had stacks of beds in the back where there had been one removed from the rooms

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so that they could isolate by themselves. Usually, this is unusual. If you have two people with the same suspected condition, they can share a room. So two people with COVID could share a room, but in this case, apparently, they needed to be alone.

Shawn Buckley

Right. So in effect, they reduced the capacity of the hospital so that they could make the claim that the hospital was full.

Kyrianna Reimer

It would seem that way.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, now in witnessing some of these things, how did it make you feel?

Kyrianna Reimer

It didn’t make me particularly trust my profs and the nurses on the wards or the government. It also made me wary of what I could say around the other students, mostly because they all supported the lockdowns, the mandates, the testing.

Shawn Buckley

Were you aware of any other student in your program that shared your views?

Kyrianna Reimer

We didn’t talk about it very much. To my knowledge, there wasn’t. I remember several conversations that the students had had when I was around where they bashed some of the other methods of treatments, including ivermectin and people that would use it.

Shawn Buckley

And when you say “bash,” you mean speaking in a very negative fashion.

Kyrianna Reimer

Speaking very negatively.

Shawn Buckley

Right. So probably ridiculing.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yes.

Shawn Buckley

So how has this affected you mentally? I understand it’s set you back in the nursing program now, I think two years.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, I had the option to return in Fall 2022. But when I went in to take a preliminary test that I required for going into clinical placement, I had horrible anxiety and no desire to return and be among my peers or the other nurses that I had worked with before because of the negative experiences there. So yeah, it has set me back a couple of years.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, and just when you were talking about that, it sounded like you were having some difficulty. Is it fair to say that you’re still having some distress over what happened?

Kyrianna Reimer

I would say that there is some. I still don’t trust nurses, generally, the ones that I worked with anyways. I don’t trust most of the students. My experience since then, having attended a hospital since that time, has not been a positive experience.

Shawn Buckley

Can you tell us about that?

Kyrianna Reimer

I had a foot infection last fall, and I went to the ER for three nights. I had to take IV [Intravenous] antibiotics. The first nurse who was there, she didn’t complete her proper testing. So generally when you enter the room before you get hooked up to the IV, they’ll ask you your name; they’ll check your wristband. They have to do full checks. Between when she brought the IV meds in, I was taken for x-rays. The IV meds hung in the room until I returned.

You’re never allowed to leave medication unattended. When she came back to hook me up to the machine, she didn’t do her checks, and I pointed out that it had been unattended. Her response was, “Are we really going to do this now?” She said, “Do you want me to give you these or not?” I let her administer them, and she informed me, too, that we do things differently here in the ER than you learned in your nursing classes.

Shawn Buckley

Okay. I want to move on to a different topic. I want to talk about the Trudeau hotel experience or the escape Trudeau hotel experience. Can you basically tell us what you experienced in May of 2021 or when you came back from Costa Rica?

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, I had travelled to Costa Rica to volunteer, get some nursing practice down there with an independent group because we had been held back during 2020 in some of our practicums. So I went to volunteer there.

When I came back, I was rerouted into Toronto instead of flying into Calgary. When I landed, they told me I had to retest

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because I was forced to test before I got on the plane. But I had to retest now and also quarantine in one of the hotels. I refused and the lady who was there told me that she highly recommended it. And when I said I wasn’t willing to, she said it would be expensive tickets. As I had a plane in 20 minutes, I asked her to please write the tickets. And then I took those. They put a mark on my passport. It was a sticker to show that I wasn’t allowed to leave. And then I went to my gate with the tickets.

Shawn Buckley

And what did the tickets total?

Kyrianna Reimer

$7,000.

Shawn Buckley

And you have a trial coming up, actually this month for those tickets. They haven’t been resolved yet.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yes, it’ll be in two days from now.

Shawn Buckley

Now, when you returned then to Alberta, my understanding is that you were supposed to quarantine for 14 days. Did you have any visits?

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah. After the period of quarantine, I had an RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] officer show up at my door to ensure I was still quarantined, even though the time had run out.

Shawn Buckley

Right, okay. And then my understanding is, though notwithstanding that the visit was a little late, you were getting notice after notice after notice through ArriveCan concerning your quarantine.

Kyrianna Reimer

Yeah, during the quarantine, I had been receiving those notices through the ArriveCan app that I had to keep checking in and providing my information as was recommended and legally responsible.

Shawn Buckley

And how did that experience make you feel?

Kyrianna Reimer

Watched, controlled, and minimized as if I couldn’t be responsible for my own health. Yeah, it was overreach by the government and completely inappropriate.

Shawn Buckley

Thank you. Those are the questions I have for you. The commissioners might have some questions.

There are no questions from the commissioners. So Kyrianna, on behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry I sincerely thank you for coming and testifying today.

Kyrianna Reimer

Thank you.

[00:22:55]

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/

Summary

When COVID hit, Kyrianna was a nursing student at Red Deer College. To date, she hasn’t completed her nursing degree and is working in another field. In September 2021 when she returned to start her third year in the nursing program, it was recommended that students take the COVID vaccine. Alberta Health Services and the School of Nursing then decided to force students to get vaccinated and they made a deadline for the first jab to be October 14th, 2021.

Kyrianna had learned in her courses that a patient should never be coerced into taking medicine; this falls under the code of ethics. There were also scientific standards that were being compromised with the COVID vaccine mandates. Since there was coercion for her to receive the vaccine or drop out of the program, she saw this as violating the code of ethics that nurses are supposed to comply with. It also seemed odd that this vaccine was being accepted so blindly and so early on in the testing process.

She made efforts to bring her position forward to the College of Nursing to see if they would grant her an exemption or change the mandate, however that was unsuccessful. The College of Nursing was adhering to all policies set out by Alberta Health Services. She managed to finish that semester so she could start her clinical placements. However, AHS mandates required that she get the jab even for her clinical placements.

She served two of her teachers with notices of liability which stated that they were enforcing these medical directives that went against her rights as a Canadian citizen both on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as ethical standards as a healthcare professional. They responded to her with a letter of misconduct threatening that they would suspend her as a student at Red Deer College because of her actions. Her clinical placements were cancelled, and her degree delayed.

In May 2021, Kyrianna travelled to Costa Rica as a volunteer so she could get some nursing experience. On her flight back she was rerouted into Toronto instead of flying direct to Calgary. When she landed in Toronto, she was told that she had to retest for Covid and quarantine in a hotel. She had just tested for Covid before getting on the plane from Costa Rica but because she refused to quarantine and test again, she was issued tickets in the amount of $7,000. When she arrived in Alberta, she was required to quarantine for 14 days. After the 14-day period an RCMP officer showed up at her door to ensure she was still quarantining, even though the 14-day period had passed. The quarantine experience made her feel watched, controlled and minimized. She felt this was government overreach which was completely inappropriate.