Wayne Lenhardt
Next and last witness is Renate. I’m probably mispronouncing Renate Lindeman. Could you give us your full name and spell it for us? And then I’ll do the oath with you.

Renate Lindeman
Yes. So my name is Renate Lindeman, and it’s spelled R-E-N-A-T-E L-I-N-D-E-M-A-N.

Wayne Lenhardt
And you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth in your testimony today?

Renate Lindeman
Yes, I do.

Wayne Lenhardt
Okay, this one’s kind of interesting in that you’ve lived in the Maritimes, I think, beginning in Nova Scotia and then New Brunswick. You come from the Netherlands originally, and you have three children, two of which have Down syndrome, correct so far?

Renate Lindeman
Correct.

Wayne Lenhardt
Okay, maybe I’ll just ask you to tell me how the whole COVID thing affects Down syndrome people.

Renate Lindeman
Okay, so I have to go back a little bit, because our story didn’t start with COVID or in 2020. It started when my oldest daughter was born with Down syndrome. That’s almost 21 years ago. So she was born with Down syndrome. And then for us, for me, the whole fear started because the medical professionals, the doctors said, “Oh, but Down syndrome means that you have a very weak immune system, so they need vaccinations.” It was more or less the mindset, the more, the better. The more vaccinations, the better protected.

Wayne Lenhardt
Could you maybe just tell us what Down syndrome is on a practical level so we can get that in our minds?

Renate Lindeman
Sure.

Wayne Lenhardt
It’s a special need of some kind.

Renate Lindeman
It is. It’s an extra chromosome on the 21st chromosome. And the typical name is Down syndrome, but it’s also trisomy 21, so an extra chromosome. And one of the things that you have is an immune deficiency. So that whole fear, they exaggerated it, that whole fear that started for us 21 years ago. But I thought the more vaccines, the better. So she got them all, and after her MMR vaccine, actually, she got vaccine injured. And that’s when I started diving into that whole thinking of, if you have a known immune deficiency, do you actually need more vaccines, or are these vaccines risky? And that’s when my whole perspective shifted, because that immune deficiency, in a nutshell, means that you have difficulties detoxing the ingredients in vaccines. So that shifted my perspective.

Wayne Lenhardt
So what happened with your children then? Were they required to take the vaccines?

Renate Lindeman
So I have two children with Down syndrome. My oldest is almost 21, and my middle child is 18 years old. And she got significantly less vaccines, and she’s doing a lot better. So my oldest was diagnosed with autism, and severe autism. So when COVID came around in 2020, I knew I wasn’t going to vaccinate because of our experience, so we declined the COVID vaccine. I was more worried— I wasn’t worried about the virus, let me put it like that, but I was worried about the government language and the measures they took when they started talking about essential and non-essential, for me that sounded all very familiar.

Wayne Lenhardt
And you did some research on that, did you not? And you ended up even writing a few articles. Can you tell us about that quickly?

Renate Lindeman
Sorry, can you repeat the last—?

Wayne Lenhardt
I’m sorry?

Renate Lindeman
Could you repeat the question?

Wayne Lenhardt
I think at that point you got involved in doing a bunch of research on this. I think there is a percentage of these children that would have neurological disorders such as autism, Alzheimer’s, learning disorders, and so on. And you ended up doing some historical research as to whether or not you felt they should take these vaccines or not. Am I right?

Renate Lindeman
Yes, correct. That story starts as well. Shortly after birth, my children were born with Down syndrome, and I became an advocate for their lives because prenatal screening programs in Canada and actually around the world resulted in so many children with Down syndrome not being born. So I looked into that as well, and I wrote a lot of articles. One article was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and it focused on how prenatal screening programs resulted in over 90% of children with Down syndrome being selectively aborted. So I dove into the research of that as well.

And so when COVID came around, I was already very familiar with the term non-essential because it stems from the same ideology, because if you find people essential, you want them to be there. So that worried me. And I actually, in the beginning with all the language of the premiers and all the political people or chief medical officers, for a while I actually thought that people, public health, would knock on our door and forcibly inject our children. And I know that has been done before.

Eighty, 90 years ago in Germany, children with special needs, disabled children, chronically ill children, were forcibly removed from their homes by Public Health Officials, and they were sent to specialized clinics. It was called the T4 program. And in these clinics under the guise of care, they would get forced treatments, which often led to their demise, to their death. And the official cause of death would be called pneumonia or other natural causes.

Wayne Lenhardt
How did the children take to doing things like wearing masks and the lockdowns and whatnot? Can you tell us about that?

Renate Lindeman
Yes. So in 2020, when I started with the masks and the social distancing, my children were still in school, but they didn’t deal with that very well, so I took them out of school. Well first they closed the schools, and that was a big thing for them because especially my oldest, who has severe autism, they’re very routine-based. So if you take away their routine and if you close the things they enjoy, like Special Olympics, they were in a bowling program, it turns the world upside down. The problem with my children was that they don’t have the language to communicate their frustration and question, so they communicate in other ways, which is hard. It led to a very challenging behaviour.

So I took them out of school when the school started again and we started homeschooling because I wanted to prevent further situations like that. And social distancing, they didn’t get that at all. So I didn’t want my kids to go to school and have to be told the whole day, like, stay away from that person. So I took my children out of school and started homeschooling, which was a good decision in hindsight.

Wayne Lenhardt
I think you turned up some literature relating to essential children, and could you tell us about that briefly as well? I think historically there is—

Renate Lindeman
Yes. So historically is, like I said—

Wayne Lenhardt
Was this the NAZI government in Germany?

Renate Lindeman
It was the T4 program. So when people think of that era in Germany, they often associate it with concentration camps and the gassing of Jews, but it actually started years before that with disabled children. So there was a lot of media propaganda saying that disabled people are a burden to society, a financial burden. And in the thirties, they started a program where the disabled people were removed from their homes and placed in specialized clinics where they would receive often deadly treatment. Yes.

Wayne Lenhardt
Yeah. Did you find any reason to think that the autistic children would be single out during this pandemic?

Renate Lindeman
The whole ideology is the same. When you start dividing people in essential and non-essential, that’s very dangerous, because who decides who is essential and who isn’t, and based on what? Is it based on how much you contribute to society, and what is that then? Can it be expressed in dollars, or? So that whole thinking is very dangerous and it leads you down a certain road.

Wayne Lenhardt
I think at this point I’m going to ask the commissioners if they have any questions or any follow up that they want to pursue here.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
Thank you for your testimony. I’m just wondering, you’ve taken the kids out of school and they’re being homeschooled. Have you seen improvement from when they were going to school, with the exception of the routine being disrupted?

Renate Lindeman
Have I seen what, sorry?

Commissioner Kaikkonen
Improvement, with the exception of the routine of your oldest child being disrupted. Beyond that disruption of the routine, have you seen improvement from homeschooling?

Renate Lindeman
At the beginning they were very— So when the school closed and everything closed around them and they didn’t understand what was happening, they developed very challenging behaviour. Like I said, because they didn’t have the language to communicate to us their frustration and anger and sadness and everything. So after, I think we did a good job distracting them and finding other things to do. And when school started again, we decided to not take that chance anymore and keep them home and homeschool. And by now we have a good routine. We started farming three and a half years ago with the eye on their development and offering them future employment so they have a meaningful contribution to society. So overall, I think they’re doing awesome.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
And in terms of the future, you’ve written articles. Are you going to write any articles about the division and the fears that you would have about the ramifications if this division continues for your children so that you’re alerting other people beyond what you’re doing here, which is wonderful, by the way.

Renate Lindeman
Thank you. So you want to know if I’m going to write future articles?

Commissioner Kaikkonen
About the division that is being caused in society and how that will have ramifications on your children, but also other children as well, and what maybe we could do to prevent going down that direction.

Renate Lindeman
I think we see it played out right now if we look around us. You just have to look at MAID, for instance, the stories that emerged since COVID, that COVID vaccine-injured people are now being offered MAID, for instance. It’s not that they ask for it. No, it’s just offered to them. So again, that whole ideology of, “Okay, so now you are disabled, so your life, obviously, so now you’re non-essential.” That is basically what it comes down to, right? “So this is what we can offer you: assistance in dying, because your life is no longer worth living.”

Commissioner Kaikkonen
So do you have any recommendations for us as commissioners when we write our report and offer recommendations that you would find important?

Renate Lindeman
Oh, that’s tough. Yeah, this whole mindset, this nihilistic mindset has to change. I think everybody contributes to society, especially nowadays with AI coming up and more automation and computers. The danger is that the powers that be consider maybe a large portion of humanity non-essential.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
Thank you very much.

Wayne Lenhardt
Any other questions from the Commissioners? No. Okay. On behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry, thank you very much for your submissions.

Renate Lindeman
Thank you very much for the opportunity, and thank you.

Credentials

Renate Lindemann is a dedicated mother and advocate originally from the Netherlands who now resides in the Maritimes region of Canada. With over 20 years of experience raising children with Down syndrome, she has become a knowledgeable and passionate voice for individuals with special needs. Renate has conducted extensive research on prenatal screening programs and their impact on Down syndrome births, even publishing an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Her commitment to understanding and improving the lives of those with Down syndrome has led her to become a thoughtful critic of certain medical practices and government policies.

Summary

Renate Lindemann testifies about her experiences as a mother of three children, two of whom have Down syndrome, during the COVID-19 pandemic. She explains that her journey began 21 years ago when her first child with Down syndrome was born, leading her to question medical professionals’ emphasis on vaccinations for children with compromised immune systems. Renate describes how her oldest child experienced a vaccine injury, which prompted her to research the risks of vaccines for individuals with Down syndrome.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Renate decided not to vaccinate her children based on her previous experiences. She expresses concern about the government’s language regarding “essential” and “non-essential” individuals, drawing parallels to historical events such as the T4 program in Nazi Germany. Renate discusses the challenges her children faced during lockdowns and with mask-wearing, leading her to homeschool them to maintain their routines and well-being.

Renate shares her research on the historical treatment of individuals with disabilities and expresses worry about the potential implications of classifying people as “essential” or “non-essential” in society. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing everyone’s value and contribution to society, regardless of their abilities. Renate concludes by discussing her family’s transition to farming as a means of providing meaningful employment for her children and highlighting the need to change societal mindsets regarding individuals with disabilities.