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Dellene Church
Our next witness will be Mark Friesen. Good afternoon, Mark.

Mark Friesen
Good afternoon.

Dellene Church
Can I get you to state your name and spell your first and last name for the record?

Mark Friesen
Mark Friesen, M-A-R-K F-R-I-E-S-E-N.

Dellene Church
Thank you. Mark Friesen, in your testimony here today, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?

Mark Friesen
I do.

Dellene Church
Thank you. Now Mark, from the start of the pandemic, you were active in protesting government mask and vaccine mandates and restrictions. As a result of that, you received several fines. You later contracted COVID and were hospitalized in Saskatchewan and eventually transferred out of province to a hospital in Ontario. You have serious concerns over the medical treatment you received in Saskatchewan and the reason behind your transfer out of province.
Can you tell us about your experiences with that hospitalization?

Mark Friesen
Yeah, so my story really starts in June of 2020 when we first started protesting what we knew was coming and that was mandates and restrictions and limitations on our Charter rights and freedoms. We initiated protests well in advance of Saskatchewan implementing those mandates and restrictions, in June of 2020. Because we knew that they were coming. There was indications from other parts of the world that showed that rights and freedoms that generally are taken for granted were being trampled on in other countries. We saw that that was probably going to come here as well, and to our province as well.

So, we initiated the protests. I sort of came to the forefront of this movement in Saskatchewan as an organizer, a promoter of these events across the province. I think I was viewed as quite a thorn in the side to our government. My whole life, I have defended the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and inalienable rights that I consider to be God-given. And that’s how I approached this situation that was coming and being imposed upon us. That these rights that are enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be inalienable and should be recognized as such, because that’s how I recognized them. And there’s a lot of people in this province that also recognized their rights as inalienable. Unfortunately, our government didn’t see that, as our rights being inalienable. And there’s a reason for that.

In our system for 150-plus years, the supremacy and sovereignty is given to Parliament and to the provincial governments. Nowhere in our Constitution does it mention “we the people,” or does it talk about inalienable God-given rights. And there’s a reason they’re able to subvert what we’ve taken for granted for so many years of our lives. Because again, that supremacy and that sovereignty rests in Parliament and to the provincial governments. So while we were gathering and while I was promoting these events and hoping for mass numbers to show up in protest and in opposition of what the government was doing in regard to our rights and freedoms, it was important for us to exercise those rights and those freedoms—like gathering, for example.

There was a mandate and a restriction put forward and a limitation to our Charter right to gather.

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There was a limitation put on that in Saskatchewan, where we couldn’t gather with more than 30 people. It was later reduced that we couldn’t gather with more than 10 people outside. There’s actually admitted by a prosecutor in this province— When they dismissed three people’s tickets, the prosecutor admitted to them that the province doesn’t have any evidence to back up that limitation or that mandate. Now very clearly written— In section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it states very clearly that any government that wishes to limit our rights and freedoms must justify, demonstrably justify, those limitations. And to my knowledge, there isn’t one government in this country that has demonstrably justified those limitations.

So I thought it was important that we continue with this protest movement, this freedom movement, to exercise our inalienable rights. And in that, because I was seen as one of the mouthpieces in this province and one that has a shark-infested mouth, the focus was put on me—myself and other organizers in the province. In Regina, I got 11 tickets, each worth $2,800. Because I was simply exercising my right under the Charter to gather and to associate and to express myself freely.

Dellene Church
And Mark, have those tickets been dealt with at this point or still in the courts?

Mark Friesen
Yeah, so they’re still within the court process; they’re under appeal. In a lot of cases, these tickets were increased from what was identified on the ticket. Most of them were worth $2,800. But there’s been judges that have increased the fines to all of these tickets. In most cases, they were increased to five, six. There was a prosecutor that requested $14,000 for one of these tickets when I was simply exercising my right, clearly guaranteed, quote-unquote, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Dellene Church
Okay. So Mark, after this process where you’ve been very involved and public, you contract COVID.

Mark Friesen
Yes. So, I ran in the federal election under the banner of the PPC [People’s Party of Canada] in September—third week of September 2021. After, we had an election evening here in Saskatoon with the federal party and with Maxime Bernier. At that event it was interesting because while the venue was filling up, we noticed that there was no air circulation in the venue. We thought that was a little bit strange, so we went and discussed this with the manager who was on that shift. And she had said, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do about this. There’s no maintenance on staff. We can’t turn the air on.” I found that a little strange. And then as it turned out, a number of people got sick that evening, myself included.

So my story is a little interesting because after that evening, I did feel a little punky. But I really didn’t have any symptoms. So I sort of dismissed a lot of what I was going through. I just chalked it up as, I just got off a campaign; I’m exhausted; I’m just going to sleep this week and get caught up on some rest. At the same time, my wife was showing symptoms. So she got quite sick, a lot sicker than I did. And then I woke up the morning of the seventh day after the election,

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and I walked from my bedroom to the bathroom. It’s about 10 feet. And I just about hit the floor. I couldn’t breathe. So at that point, I basically told myself I’m going to be fine; everything’s going to be no problem. I went downstairs. I got in my cave, and that’s where I spent the remainder of the day. Now, at that time, we still had some ivermectin and some HCQ, which I tried to give myself, obviously too late. And then by 8 o’clock in the evening, I literally crawled upstairs, struggling to breathe, informed my wife that, “I can’t breathe, I got to call an ambulance.” So that’s what I did.

The ambulance showed up, took my oxygen. It was at 70, which is quite low. And off to the hospital I went. When I got to the hospital, I don’t remember too much of the first three days I was there; I was doing a lot of sleeping. But I was really struggling to breathe. I remember the doctor coming in every day and asking me when I would give them permission to put me on a ventilator. And I kept telling him to get stuffed, “I’m not going on your ventilator because that seems to me to be a death sentence.” So I refused that for the first three days. Then I woke up on the fourth day. I had two prongs on my nose, a mask on my face trying to drive some oxygen into my system.

The doctor came in on that fourth morning, about 11 o’clock, and asked me what we’re doing. And I said, “Well, I’m either going to suffocate in this bed or I’m going to die on your ventilator. Those are my choices.” So off to the ventilator I went. Immediately, after being put into a coma, my heart rate went to 260 beats per minute. They had to shut my heart off. It took them three times to get it going again. They just about lost me right off the hop.

Initially, those first three days that I spent, there was no treatment given. And I was aware at that time that ivermectin and HCQ were early effective treatments for this disease, this virus.

Dellene Church
So Mark, are you saying in the first three days before you were put on the ventilator, you were receiving no medical intervention? You were just in a hospital situation?

Mark Friesen
I was basically left there to suffocate. I found out later that while I was in the coma, they did start some antibiotic treatment for my lung infection. They also discovered on my lungs three orange-sized blood clots.

And the evidence behind what the world has gone through seems to suggest that this virus was manufactured and released on the masses. Somebody needs to be held accountable for that.

As I went through this first seven or eight days of being in a coma and just about dying and discovering these blood clots—

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It was around the eighth day. My wife would get notified by health care staff as to my condition, regular sort of daily updates. But on this occasion, she was contacted by a doctor, the doctor who was in charge of my care. And the doctor was very truthful with my wife. And he said to my wife that somebody way above his pay grade “has decided to put your husband on a transfer list to Ontario.” And in his words, “Your husband is in no condition to transfer across the hall, never mind in a plane at 30,000 feet.” So my wife then asked him, “Doctor, why would they do this?”

I get a little emotional at this point, trying to understand what my wife is going through at that moment. Because she’s also very sick and wondering if this is the treatment she’s going to receive.

Dellene Church
And were they asking for her consent to this transfer?

Mark Friesen
No. He simply stated, “This has nothing to do with his health,” and in his opinion, “everything to do with his politics.” So my wife took that to mean that the Government of Saskatchewan is trying to kill her husband. How else is she supposed to take that? When the doctor says, “This has nothing to do with his health. Transferring him is the last thing they should be doing.”

Dellene Church
So despite all of that, your transfer goes ahead.

Mark Friesen
Yeah, my transfer does go ahead. I survived the flight, obviously, through the grace of God. Got to Mount Sinai Hospital. I was put under the care of a world-renowned lung doctor who immediately put me on the strongest antibiotic they have, called meropenem. I had my advocate with me, a gentleman by the name of Sean Taylor, who was an emergency nurse in the B.C. healthcare system, who was fired because he was telling too much truth through his political campaign. So they fired him; so he had some time on his hands. And luckily for me, he was in my corner. His mouth is just as shark-infested as mine. I had the right guy with me. He ensured that all the care that I should have been receiving was happening. And it was. I have to hand it to the doctors and the health care staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. As Sean puts it, the attitude was 180 degrees different than it was in Saskatoon.

Dellene Church
Was there any comments made at that hospital as to why you weren’t receiving that treatment right away in Saskatchewan?

Mark Friesen
Not that I’m aware of. I don’t know if those discussions had happened; I would have to check with Sean. I don’t know, I can only assume, and I’m only left to assume. But that was basically the starting point to my recovery. I ended up being in a coma for five weeks. At the end of my time in Toronto, they struggled to wake me up because I kept fighting with the ventilator. And I wouldn’t agree with my breathing. So they tried five times to wake me up,

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and it wasn’t working. And then the fifth time, it finally worked to the point where they were able to transfer me back to Saskatoon. And I also want to say this, that the health care staff at St. Paul’s Hospital, once I arrived and was awake and conscious and remembered things, they were fantastic. They were phenomenal. There was no judgment. Because I was obviously unvaxxed: I decided that I wasn’t going to take this experiment because there wasn’t enough research to back up taking this experiment. And I’m quite happy that I made that decision, even though I went through this experience. I don’t think the vax would have prevented this from happening in any way.

Dellene Church
And so when you were in the Ontario hospital, did you have family members that were vaccinated that could come and see you?

Mark Friesen
Yeah. My daughter actually was able to fly out and spend a couple of days with me.

Dellene Church
But your wife was unable because she was unvaccinated.

Mark Friesen
That’s right. That’s correct. Yeah.

Dellene Church
Okay.

Mark Friesen
Yep. And Sean Taylor was also unvaxxed as well. But he managed to talk his way in. So I’m pretty thankful that he did.

Dellene Church
And are you still suffering consequences from being ill?

Mark Friesen
Yeah. So the recovery process has been long. The initial recovery process coming out of a five-week coma is extensive. I couldn’t walk. I could barely talk. In fact, there was probably about 10 days where my wife was doing some reality therapy with me because I was on some pretty heavy drugs, ketamine and fentanyl and a number of others. So it takes a little while for you to break away from fantasy land into reality. And my wife did a phenomenal job of easing me out of that state and into the state of reality.

Now of course, I spent another month in the hospital. I was released on December 9th. The doctor had said I was probably going to be in there ‘til well after the New Year’s. But I told him, “You want to bet? I’m getting out of here as soon as I can.” So I worked as hard as I could to start walking, so I could function properly at home while still under some care from my wife. I still have issues stemming from this. Significant scar tissue of my lungs. I feel like I’m somewhere at around 65 to 70 per cent of my normal lung capacity. I can’t do things that I used to be able to do simply because I don’t have breath. I don’t have lung capacity. The blood clots that were on my lungs left serious scar tissue and fibrosis. And that’s something that doctors are telling me I’ll never get back.

Dellene Church
And what do you feel could have or should have been done differently in your treatment to lessen the seriousness of your illness?

Mark Friesen
Well again, as I said, I was well aware, and I think I even asked the hospital staff the first three days I was in a hospital, “Why aren’t you giving me ivermectin or HCQ? It seems to be effective and early treatment, so we can avoid some of these consequences.” Of course, their position was the same as what the Government told them. The Government said, “We’re not going to be issuing any of that horse medicine.” So I really believe that there’s thousands, if not more, Canadians around this country that died because the governments across this country decided not to use early effective treatment like ivermectin and HCQ.

Dellene Church
And also, your transfer at the time most definitely would have exacerbated your illness.

Mark Friesen
Yeah, 100 per cent. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. It probably extended my coma time, I’m assuming. I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know.

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But it seems all of the things that should have been done and the treatment I should have been given was not given. And mistakes were made. I can’t say if it was on purpose. But it seems to me it was when the doctor says, “This is above my pay grade,” and somebody above his pay grade has made this decision to stick me on a transfer flight to Ontario. When it was not in my best interest medically.

Dellene Church
Okay, I think we’ll turn it to the commissioners to see if they have any questions.

Mark Friesen
Sure.

Commissioner Massie
Thank you very much for your testimony. I have a couple of questions. First is, you said that while you were at home and you started to feel the symptoms of what was likely COVID, you started to self-medicate. Did you have any specific information about the kind of amount or dosage of these molecules you should have taken?

Mark Friesen
No. And that’s an interesting question because we had ivermectin in pill form, and we had HCQ. The ivermectin in pill form was 12 milligrams, which— I took one, which was woefully inadequate for the size of the human being I am. Only because I didn’t know. I was unaware of dosage and what I should have been taking to effectively treat my symptoms. It was far too late in the process. And I have to take responsibility in that for the first seven days that I wasn’t feeling quite right, I sort of dismissed it as just being tired and exhausted coming off a campaign. So, I really— I dismissed a lot of what I was feeling, even though I’m watching my wife with her symptoms. She self-medicated as well and ended up not having to go to the hospital.

Commissioner Massie
So did she use a different regimen in her case or you don’t know?

Mark Friesen
She’s quite a bit smaller than me. So, I think she just used the ivermectin in the pill form and the HCQ and rode it out by herself. And it worked for her.

Commissioner Massie
So, from what you understood from the conversation—I know that some of it was probably after the fact or with your wife—what was the medical reason that was provided for your transfer to Toronto? Was it because they thought that your condition was beyond what they were able to manage and you would get more specialized or more expert care over there?

Mark Friesen
No. Again, the doctor had said that this decision had nothing to do with my health and that I shouldn’t, in his opinion, probably shouldn’t be transferred. So this decision was, again, above his pay grade. Somebody at SHA had made the decision to put me on this transfer list, and according to the doctor, who was in charge of my care, didn’t believe that it was in my best interest to transfer. So it doesn’t sound like it was a decision with my health in mind or my best interest in mind. It didn’t seem that way.

Commissioner Massie
So from what you understood, in Toronto you receive antibiotic treatment because one of your conditions had to do with the bacterial infection. Was this antibiotic also available back in the hospital you were in in Saskatoon?

Mark Friesen
It would have been. I assume it would have been available to the doctors. I mean, if it’s available in Toronto, it should be available at RUH [Royal University Hospital] in Saskatoon. I’m not sure why I wasn’t put on that. There was some doctors in charge of my care, I’m sure, that could have prescribed meropenem. And there’s another one that I ended up—when I got home, I had a PICC [Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter] line—that I would give to myself called ertapenem. And that was just one step lower than the meropenem but still a very strong antibiotic, just to kill that infection that I had in my lungs. So it seems to me that they probably could have initiated that treatment here in Saskatoon, but for whatever reason, they didn’t.

Commissioner Massie
Are you aware of any other combinational drug that you would have received with the antibiotic in Toronto?

Mark Friesen
Blood thinner, that I remember,

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being told that I was on some blood thinners to help with the clotting issues from the spike protein and whatever that did to my system. Other than that, I can’t recall any other medications that I was on. There probably are some, but I don’t recall what they are.
Commissioner Massie
And was the blood thinner medication provided also back in Saskatoon before you moved to Toronto, or is it only in Toronto that they started the blood thinner?

Mark Friesen
I don’t know, actually I don’t know the answer to that. I would have to look at my medical records to see if they did initiate blood clot medicine. I’m not sure.

Commissioner Massie
You also mentioned—if I’m coming back before you got COVID—that you think it happened during this meeting inside where there was a lot of people and the ventilation was not properly functioning. Are you aware of the number of other people that would have got the infection in addition to yourself and your wife? Or was it just a few people, just only you?

Mark Friesen
Yeah, from what I understand, there was at least upwards of 20 people that had gotten sick from that evening. Again, I think we can attribute that to the lack of air circulation in that environment. It definitely was not an environment conducive to healthy existence. And again, I’m not sure why they didn’t have air circulation on. It’s very curious.

Commissioner Massie
Thank you.

Mark Friesen
Yep.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
I’m from Ontario. And I often wondered when I heard that we were flying patients in from other provinces, what we were doing with the patients that were in our over-capacity hospitals in our own area?

But I’d like to take you back to the Charter for a minute. The Charter writes— In the preamble of the Charter, we know that we’re under “the supremacy of God” in this country and “the rule of law.” So, to me, the freedom in society means being subject to laws enacted in a legislature that applied to everyone equally, including the premise that persons are free from both government and private restrictions.

So, do you believe the government and the judiciary acted, or are acting, under that premise that they too are subject to the same laws as the citizenry, particularly when you think of the increase in the fines that was suggested by the prosecutor?

Mark Friesen
It seems to me that they’re not being held to account. As I said, under Section 1, it’s very clear that they have to demonstrably justify any limitations to our Charter rights. To my awareness, there isn’t one government that’s actually done that: demonstrably justified the limitations of the Charter in this country. I’ve yet to hear of any government that’s provided evidence that backs up what they did to us, in limiting these Charter rights. I mean, it’s gotten so bad even in Saskatchewan, that the Court of King’s Bench made a ruling, because it was an emergency that they don’t have to live up to demonstrably justifying these limitations. It just seems to me and it sort of proves to me that the supremacy and sovereignty lie within Parliament and the provincial government. What is our Charter for, if it doesn’t represent these rights that I consider to be inalienable?

Commissioner Kaikkonen
So in terms of our democracy, do you think we’re moving towards an oligarchy where we’re ruled by the few, when you think of how you just explain sovereignty and supremacy?

Mark Friesen
Yeah. This leads us into authoritarianism, totalitarianism, where the government reigns supreme. Again, nowhere in our Constitution, nowhere in our Charter does it refer to that act being derived by the will of the people. Nowhere in it does it represent “the people.” It only refers to the Parliament and the provincial governments that they have the supremacy and the sovereignty to limit our inalienable rights. Rights that I consider to be God-given inalienable rights.

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Nowhere in our Charter, nowhere in our Constitution, does it recognize the will of the people. And so this is why they’re able to do what they’re doing. I think this pushes us in the direction of fundamental change in this country and recognize that it seems to me our Charter rights and freedoms aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
I’m going to read something that’s a little bit long, so I’m going to try to make it brief. George Bernard Shaw, in his 1905 play, Major Barbara, made a statement, and he was referring to the intellectual oligarchy that acts against the common people.

And one of the lines in that play is, “I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I want to aim them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politicians, who once in authority is the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all fools, rascals, and impostors.”

So when we think of this statement through the lens of the last three years and what you have had to deal with, do you believe the interests of the common people were protected or that the populace had the tools to legitimately present a dissenting voice, and maybe the freedom as well?

Mark Friesen
No. This has been a concern for the three years that I’ve been active: there is a large number of Canadian citizens across this country that had zero representation. They had nobody in provincial parliaments or legislatures, in the federal parliament, representing us, representing our freedoms. We are a very large segment of the population that has gone unrepresented because there was never an entity elected in this country, provincially or federally, that stood for the people. Not one. And that’s an incredibly sad state of affairs when you have a very large segment of our population that has no representation. There’s something wrong, I think, when all of these people— And the convoy showed how many people there are that felt this way. And what the convoy represented that if they’re not represented, then we have to represent ourselves. And we’re going to gather and we’re going to express our opposition to their decisions peacefully, publicly. And that is our right.

But as we saw with the convoy apparently, it’s not our right. Apparently, a peaceful protest can be bludgeoned with horses and soldiers and beatings. That’s hard to swallow when so many of us have relatives that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. And to have them trampled like they have been over the last three years is disgusting.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
You’ve given a number of recommendations throughout your testimony. Is there anything specific that you haven’t said that you would like to say in terms of changing the climate or the mindset of governments and the judiciary specifically?

Mark Friesen
So I believe there is a mechanism for change in this country, and it’s called the Amending Formula. We have to take advantage of what former premier from Newfoundland—I forget his name off the top, Peckford, thank you—created in ’82.

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When they created the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there was also an Amending Formula that was created. I think we have to take advantage of that Formula. I think we have to move forward to amend our Constitution, to amend the preamble of the Constitution, to include, “derived by the will of the people.”

I think our Constitution has to recognize the people. I think what we’ve seen in the last three years has proven to so many of us that our inalienable rights can be abridged at any time the government decides they need to do that. We need a rock-solid Constitution that recognizes the people and our inalienable rights.

So, there’s a document that’s created by a fellow by the name of Brenton Froelich, and it’s called the True North Declaration. And I encourage people to read it. It is, I believe, the mechanism to move forward, to amend our Constitution, to reflect the will of the people, and then also to amend and to repeal section 1 and section 33 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which gives the supremacy to Parliament and the provincial governments to do exactly what they’ve done to us over the last three years. We need to repeal that legislation, so our inalienable rights are just that. So we never have to go through this again.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
Thank you very much.

Mark Friesen
You’re welcome.

Dellene Church
On behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry, I’d like to thank you very much for your testimony here today, Mark.

Mark Friesen
My pleasure.

[00:42:25]

Final Review and Approval: Jodi Bruhn, August 21, 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

Mr.Friesen was an organizer of the Freedom Rally against government mandates and lockdowns. He and his wife contracted the COVID virus, and at the early stages they both started taking (he later realized was not enough for himself) Ivermectin and HCQ. He ended up being hospitalized. The first three days he was not given any medication other than antibiotics. They found multiple blood clots on his lungs. He was put on a ventilator and his heart stopped.

The Saskatchewan health care providers ended up having to transfer him to Ontario, despite being told that this was completely political and not medically prudent. There was no unique medications that he received in Ontario that he would not have been able to receive in SK. He was in a coma for 5 weeks. His wife, though also unvaccinated, was unable to visit her husband. He later learned that the transfer was likely political, not health related.

He was transferred back to Saskatchewan and came out of his coma, but the recovery process was very difficult and timely.