[00:00:00]

Kassy Baker
Good afternoon, Mr. Holloway, can you please state and spell your name for the record?

Robert Holloway
Good afternoon, my name is Robert Ivan Holloway, H-O-L-L-O-W-A-Y.

Kassy Baker
Very good, and do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Robert Holloway
I do.

Kassy Baker
Very good. Now, Mr. Holloway, I understand you’re here to tell us about your experiences and observations regarding censorship. And also some of your observations regarding your interaction with the Freedom Convoy movement here locally in Winnipeg. Just to provide some context to that, can you please describe to me your current profession and age? Could you just give a little bit of background about yourself?

Robert Holloway
Sure. I’m 45 years old. I’m married. I have two children. I have a daughter, age nine, and a son, aged 11. I’m a lawyer by profession. I have two university degrees. I have an advanced degree in economics and a minor in philosophy from the University of Manitoba in 1999. I have a law degree from the University of Manitoba, 2002. I received my call to the bar to practise law in Manitoba in 2003. I’ve been practising ever since. I specialize in construction and commercial litigation. Currently, I am the managing partner of Holloway Thliveris Commercial and Construction Lawyers. I live just outside of Winnipeg, and I practise downtown in Winnipeg.

Kassy Baker
Very good. I think that we will start with some of your observations regarding the early days of the pandemic and your investigations into the dangers of the virus itself. And I’ll let you take the lead from here.

Robert Holloway
Sure. So I’ll just preface by saying that I don’t have any particular expertise in the medicine or the science behind COVID or the vaccines. I’m a layperson in that regard. But I’m going to talk a little bit about what I learned with respect to the science and at what juncture because I believe it’s material to understanding some things with respect to what I observed with the legacy media, and other observations.

So if we go back to March of 2020, this is the point in time in which COVID-19 has been declared to be in North America and its governments have expressed a concern. Our provincial public health authority is advising people to stay at home as much as possible, to work at home. I’m a practising lawyer at the time; the courts were shut down. We weren’t having in-person meetings. We weren’t having any trials. We weren’t having any motions. Nothing was happening at the courthouse.

So there was a period of time starting about mid-March 2020 where most of us were at home. And I took the opportunity in this extraordinary set of circumstances to do some of my own research into what this COVID-19 was all about. And I did what most normal people do who are lay people like myself: I went online and I started researching whatever I could find. And at that point in time, the whole pandemic wasn’t politicized, or at least, it wasn’t politicized the way it has become. It wasn’t a polarized issue and you could find a lot of information.

It was new in North America, but COVID-19 was not really new in other parts of the world such as Europe and, of course, China. And there was very good information from China and from Europe that you could drill down to—right to peer-reviewed studies from reputable universities and reputable journals.

[00:05:00]

I found a lot of interesting things, but I don’t remember all the things that I uncovered in doing the research. But what jumped out at me, that I recall today, is that very early on, it was clear, based upon the information coming out of Europe and China, the demographics of those who were affected by this virus. And it was clear that it was individuals who had two or more serious underlying health conditions combined with those that were at a certain age threshold. And what was notable to me is that children under the age of 18 had basically zero risk.

So very early on with this information, which I felt was quite reliable given the various sources that I found, the whole idea of the virus was not something that I was afraid of. I was not personally afraid. I was not even personally afraid for my elderly parents who are in their 80s and late 70s, who are in good health. I was not afraid for my wife. I was not afraid for my children. I was basically not afraid. I parked that information, went on with my life as we all did or tried to do at that point in time.
But the interesting thing is that, of course, COVID and issues relating to COVID were a daily news item. And the way the legacy media, or at least, the legacy media that I was attuning into, was not being candid and forthright about the demographics of who was being affected by this virus. And I thought that was unusual. I thought that was strange. And it was only—and it’s a rough order magnitude here—but it was only about six months after I had done this kind of personal research on my own that the mainstream media, the legacy media, started to talk about the demographics of who this was being affected by.

And I thought, you know, I’m just a lay person. I just went online and spent some time and found this information six months ago. Why is it only being publicly talked about now? I thought it was strange. I don’t remember all the times in which I had done research and had found information in which there was a delay before it became information that was being publicly broadcast. But it happened many times. That’s a particular one I remembered very specifically, but it happened multiple times.

So fast forward: I’m living life. I’m trying to do my best to be a father and a husband and a practising lawyer, and so on. The vaccines are starting to roll out. We’re now in about spring of 2021, spring, early summer. And I’m becoming eligible based upon my age to receive a dosage of vaccine. And while I’m a bit skeptical, based upon some of my previous experiences with the delay of information coming out, at the same time, I didn’t have a lot of source information other than what I received from mainstream media about these vaccines. And the messaging that was coming out was, “don’t just do this for yourself, do it for your community, do it for elderly people, do it for people that are immunocompromised.”

And so, I did it. I took the first dosage of the vaccine. I gave public health the benefit of the doubt based upon whatever information that I had, which was really all publicly available legacy mainstream media information.

[00:10:00]

And likewise, roughly six months later, I took my second dosage. And all the while, I maintained relationships with friends and others who made the decision to not get vaccinated. And I have to confess, at the time, I thought it was odd that they weren’t getting vaccinated. I didn’t understand why they weren’t getting vaccinated. I didn’t understand what the rationale was for them not getting vaccinated. But at the same time, I believed that people ought to have a free choice with respect to these matters.

Fast forward to the late fall, winter of 2021. The public health authority in Manitoba was now recommending and had vaccine dosages available for children aged five to twelve. At that point in time, my children were aged eight and nine. So they were right within that bracket. And my wife, who I have the utmost respect for and who is a wonderful mother and a wonderful person, stated to me, “I’m going to take the children to get vaccinated.” And I said, “Well, you know, don’t you think we should do some due diligence on this?” And her response was, “What due diligence are you going to do? Public health authorities have told us that we should get our children vaccinated.”

And I would have said, I believe I did say, “Well, you know, you can’t just simply take face value what public health authorities say. We know—and we’ve known since the beginning of this pandemic—that children in our children’s age bracket who are healthy children have almost zero risk of serious adverse outcomes, including death from COVID. So I think we should spend some time looking into this. My own sister—who has a different mother than myself, was quite a bit older than I—her mother was prescribed thalidomide in 1960. Her mother made the decision not to take it. It’s probably one of the best decisions her mother made, as we all know. So public health authorities and professionals of all stripes don’t always get things right. We’re making decisions for our children. We need to spend some time.”

So this was the conversation, in essence, that I was having with my wife. And she said, “Okay, well, when are you going to do this due diligence?” I said, “You know, look, it’s just a really busy stretch right now. I’m going to do it as soon as I can.” And every day from that point onwards, the friction between her and I increased. And to the point where she was calling me up in the middle of the day at work and demanding that we get the children vaccinated, or I do my due diligence right here, right now, and let her know ASAP.

[00:15:00]

To say that it was causing friction between my wife and I is an understatement. Finally, after about, I don’t know, five days, six days of this, I’m like, “Okay, I’m just going to stay at work until whatever time takes me at night. And I’m going to do whatever due diligence I can do.”

So like I did at the beginning of the pandemic, like lots of people do when they want to find things out, I go online. And I wind up at the Center for Disease Control in the United States website and Health Canada website and I look at the sections on vaccinating children. And I read them: every single word, top to bottom. I click on every single link. I try to drill down to supporting evidence, journal studies, so on, which I could at the beginning of the pandemic: I could drill right down to very legitimate medical and scientific information. And I couldn’t.

And it was interesting. I’ll start with the CDC. The CDC was making a pitch that you should get your children vaccinated because your children are at risk from severe outcome and/or death as a result of COVID. And Health Canada website was saying, they weren’t so much pushing that; what they were pushing is—which I think is more honest—they were saying, “do it to protect the elderly and the vulnerable.” And both websites had statistics; they had numbers. I was able to use some of them to run my own analysis.

And a couple things struck me. One is that there was a disconnect between what the CDC was saying and what Health Canada was saying on this very point. Another thing that struck me is that the arguments that both of them were putting forward just didn’t seem very compelling. If that was the best arguments that they could make, it just didn’t even seem that obvious, based upon their own arguments, that there was a good reason to vaccinate children. But at the same time, the website seemed to indicate that there was no significant likelihood of an adverse effect from the vaccine. The Health Canada website, speaking of vaccinating children for the sake of protecting those that are immunocompromised and elderly, I thought was immoral.

But at the end of the day, I had a situation to face, which I don’t know where it was going to lead within my family. I very much valued the relationship with my wife and having a strong family unit. And based upon not having any information that I could find to indicate that there was a significant risk of taking the vaccine, I agreed to have the children vaccinated. My wife immediately took them down and had them vaccinated.

By happenstance, about a week later, I was having a lunch with a lawyer from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. For anyone that’s not aware of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, they are very active in COVID-related litigation. And the topic came up of vaccination and children.

[00:20:00]

And this lawyer started telling me some things about the vaccines as they related to children. And to say that it was contrary to what I had read in the CDC and Health Canada websites is an understatement. It was like two different planets. And I have respect for this lawyer, I have respect for the organisation. I know that they had experts who were highly educated and knowledgeable that they were getting their information from. But I was contrasting this with all the publicly available information that I could find at that time, and they just weren’t adding up. And I said, “Look, I’m sorry, but can you send me these studies? Can you send me these expert reports? Because I don’t know who to believe anymore.” And she did.

And I read them once again, from top to bottom. And we’re talking, you know, many of these were peer-reviewed medical journal articles. Some were from more obscure sources, but some were from very well-recognized sources. And what I learned was really jaw-dropping. I’m not a medical doctor and I’m not a scientist, but I am university-educated. I do deal with experts in my profession, a lot. I am, I think, basically capable of reading these things and understanding them. And I know enough to know that any given study can say one thing and be contradicted by another study the next day. But what really jumped out at me is that there was a lot of consistency amongst this material, none of which was public information.

And in this time of confusion, I sent one of these studies—it was a peer-reviewed study with respect to children and vaccination—to a medical doctor I know that for this person’s protection, I will not identify. And I said in the email, “Is this study intellectually defendable or is this just whacko stuff?” That’s the words I used, literally, I’m quoting. And the doctor replied, “It’s very intellectually defendable. There is a fierce debate within the medical community about vaccinating children from COVID-19.” And this medical doctor also sent me an article from the British Medical Journal, which this doctor indicated was more widely circulated amongst the profession than the peer-reviewed study that I had been reading. But, basically, the British Medical Journal article, which was January 13, 2021—about five months before vaccine rollout for children—was saying the same thing as what I had reviewed.

And I stopped. There’s a fierce debate within the medical community

[00:25:00]

as to whether children should get vaccinated?

Kassy Baker
Can you describe some of the revelations that you learned through these peer-reviewed studies and how that differed from the research that you had done from the publicly available information from the CDC and Health Canada?

Robert Holloway
Sure, sure, let me just finish this thought though, I will do that. There was nothing on the CDC website or Health Canada website to inform parents that there was any debate within the medical community. Not a fierce debate. No debate. This was consensus.

The information, to answer your question: What I garnered from both the British Medical Journal and the peer-reviewed study, as well as other information, was that first of all, the risk to healthy children aged five to twelve from COVID-19 was negligible. However, because the standard for approving vaccines requires at least five years of clinical trials, as I understand it—not being an expert, but as I understand it—and because of the nature of COVID-19 and the urgency to get out a vaccine, these clinical trials had been truncated. And so, there wasn’t the benefit of the full five years to ascertain what, if any, significant adverse effects were related to these vaccines.

The licensing bodies provided what I understand to be an emergency authorized use permit for these vaccines. And the consequence of all that is, once again, as I understand it— First of all, I never understood any of this stuff before I got vaccinated that this was an emergency authorized use and that the typical standard is five years because some of these side effects don’t appear until many years later. I had no idea: this is something I was learning and questioning my own decision-making process with respect to myself getting vaccinated, but I digress.

The result, when you put all these things together is that because there hasn’t been a significant amount of time to do the clinical trials that would normally be done for these vaccines, the risk profile to the vaccine was unknown, which made it not a negligible risk. You put all that stuff together: you have the risk to children aged five to twelve from COVID as being negligible versus the risk of taking the vaccine as being not negligible. It doesn’t make any sense. The only possible justification could be that you’re doing this to protect the elderly and the immunocompromised, which, in my humble opinion, is completely immoral.

Kassy Baker
This doctor that you spoke with, did she ever come forward publicly with her own thoughts which she had discussed with you?

Robert Holloway
Not that I’m aware of. I did ask this doctor if there was any kind of gag order that was being placed on this doctor by the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manitoba.

[00:30:00]

And this doctor advised me that in effect there was. And this doctor provided a screenshot of what I believe to be a directive from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, which directed physicians to not depart from the narrative that’s being put forward by public health authorities in Manitoba. And part of the rationale for this is to make sure there is a consistent message to the public. So I understand—and this is all hearsay of course—but I understand that this has resulted in a chilling effect within the medical profession, at least in Manitoba, with respect to discussing issues surrounding COVID and vaccination.

I want to add one thing here before I move on. My children are fully vaccinated with all other vaccines recommended by our pediatrician. My wife and I believe in science. As a regular matter of course, we follow the advice of our physicians. There’s no ideological position that I come from here. It’s maybe cold comfort, but I am thankful, based upon what I did learn after my children got the first dosage of the COVID-19 vaccine and I began sharing this information with my wife, that we decided to not get our children vaccinated with a second dose.

So in December of 2021, Omicron variant becomes an issue. And it’s obvious that this variant is spreading rapidly and it’s obvious, I think to most people, that it’s spreading amongst both vaccinated and unvaccinated. And at this time, I’m now devouring every bit of information I can get from what I believe are reliable sources. And once again, being a lay person but not a completely uneducated lay person, it became clear to me that the mandates were completely disconnected with what the science was saying about the virus and the efficacy of these vaccines. And the fact that the public health authorities were now trying to basically pull a fast one over me with respect to my decision-making for my children’s best interest really caused me to mobilize and do something. And one of the things that I became a part of was the Freedom Convoy protests here in Winnipeg.

[00:35:00]

On January 29, I believe, 2022, a rally was organized in the Flying J truck stop west of Winnipeg and I believe in other locations around the province all to converge on the city of Winnipeg. And I called up a buddy of mine and I said, “Hey, let’s go, let’s join this.” I’ve never been involved in a protest in my life, but this was different. So we jumped in my truck and we grabbed a Canadian flag and we joined I don’t know how many—but I’m thinking order of magnitude a thousand other vehicles with Canadian flags. And we’re going around the Perimeter. We get to the east Perimeter, the Highway 1 overpass, and from every direction from looking north, looking south, looking east were vehicles basically almost as far as you could see with Canadian flags. It was an absolutely remarkable, organic event, and whether you agreed with it or you didn’t agree with it, something very significant was happening. And I participated in this. We went around the Perimeter, we went down Portage, we went past the legislature, we went up to city hall. And as I’m driving, my buddy with me is monitoring what’s being reported on this in the mainstream legacy media—and there’s nothing. Nothing.

Fast forward about a week or so, the Freedom Convoy protests become stationary in downtown Winnipeg outside the legislative building. So on Broadway and Memorial. And the whole area becomes basically occupied by semi-trucks, by tractors, by mobile homes. I believe we had some Atco trailers, we had a stage, and at various times anywhere between, you know, a 100-odd people and probably 500, I don’t know, a 1,000 maybe at certain higher times. And I reached out to the organizers and I identified who I was. I said, you know, “I’m a lawyer, I want to help, and I want to speak.”

And on February 5th, which is a Saturday, I spoke at the protest. And I spoke largely about my experiences with the science and my children. And I was candid: “Look, I’m double vaccinated, but here I am.” And so, that began an association between me and the organizers of the Freedom Convoy protests in Winnipeg. And I supplied legal advice, I supplied other advice, strategic advice,

[00:40:00]

whatever assistance, within reason, I could provide. I was on the phone or in-person meeting sometimes on an hourly basis, definitely on a daily basis.

Probably consistent with others that have testified here—though I haven’t seen a lot of the testimony, but I’ve seen some of it—almost everything that was eventually reported in legacy media that I saw with respect to the Freedom Convoy protests in Winnipeg was wrong. There were people from all walks of life: There were probably as many women as there were men, if not more women than there were men. There was every different background and a variety of ages. The atmosphere was positive. The people were peaceful in nature and were really trying hard, in my observation, to ensure that there were no bad apples that were going to wreck this event, this protest. There was certainly nothing that I was ever made aware of—and I’m sure I would have been made aware of it given my assistance that I was providing—with respect to hate symbols or anything like that. That never, never occurred, at least, not in Winnipeg.

The atmosphere in the city was extremely polarized. There were people that either supported what this movement was doing or people that detested it completely. And there was almost no one that I saw that was really on the fence on that.

Fast forward to February 14, 2021 [sic]: The federal government invokes the Emergencies Act. And it was obvious that the focus of the emergency, or the idea behind the focus of the Emergencies Act, was to disperse the protests in Ottawa and perhaps some of the ones that were affecting the border crossings. But the wording of the actual invocation of the Act, as I understood it, applied across Canada, including to the protests in Winnipeg. And don’t quote me on the exact wording, but I understood at the time to be to the effect of anyone that participates and provides material assistance to the Freedom Convoy protests could be liable to have their bank assets frozen, property seized, amongst potentially other consequences, I don’t know, possibly ranging to arrest, fines.

That day, I went to my bank and I withdrew thousands of dollars in cash. And I hid it. And it’s still hidden. It’s not at my house, too. We, as a protest, i.e., the organizers and myself— And I should be clear that I am part of a group of lawyers that were assisting the protest here in Winnipeg. I wasn’t doing this by myself.

[00:45:00]

There were others that were involved. I won’t name names, but there were a group of us that were involved in assisting. But on that day, February 14, 2021 [sic], it became clear to all of us that we were either going to have to shut this whole thing down, or in effect, we were going to have to basically communicate and organize in a clandestine fashion.

And so, we did. We had to stop using cell phones. We had to conduct communications of a sensitive nature, literally, in dark corners of parkades where we were confident that there weren’t security cameras and anyone that was close enough to observe, listen. There was a huge police presence, so we had little doubt with the police presence, combined with the invocation of the Emergencies Act, that cell phone communications were being intercepted, although I don’t have any direct evidence to that effect. But we assumed that was the case.

The whole environment was surreal. Let me rewind this for a second. I’m participating in this in good faith with the best information that I can find for the protection of my children, and the Government of Canada has now made me a criminal? For protesting—to protect and to look out for the interests of my children on a good faith basis—peacefully? Is this really happening in this country?
I was born in this country. I was raised in this country. I’ve worked all my adult life, aside from the time I was in school. I’ve never broken the law. I pay my taxes. But for the first time in my life this country, that I thought was my country, was against me. Utterly against me. I felt stateless and I still feel stateless. And until there is some serious reckoning by those who were responsible for managing the governmental response to this pandemic in a forthright, honest manner, I don’t foresee my feelings changing.

Kassy Baker
Thank you, Mr. Holloway. Are there any questions from the Commissioners?

Commissioner DiGregorio
Thank you, Mr. Holloway for your testimony today.

I have a few questions about particularly your experience that happened once the Emergencies Act was enacted. And you mentioned that you actually went and withdrew cash from your bank account, presumably because you were fearful that the measures would be taken against you personally. And I was wondering if you could comment on whether you felt that you would be targeted for providing legal services to members of the Convoy or whether you felt that it was more related to your participation as a protester.

Robert Holloway
Honestly, I thought anything was possible. I felt that I was living in a bizarro world where anything was possible, including repercussions from my governing body, repercussions from the public, the government.

[00:50:00]

I was aware of all of those possibilities, and quite frankly, I was prepared to accept that risk.

Commissioner DiGregorio
And I’m also wondering, you spoke a little bit about some of the clandestine organizing that was undertaken once you were concerned about surveillance and whatnot. Did you feel that there was a risk that your solicitor–client privileged communications could be intercepted or were the target of interception by the government?

Robert Holloway
Yeah, once again, I considered all reasonable/borderline unreasonable possibilities to be risks. I don’t have any evidence that my communications were intercepted or solicitor–client privilege was breached. But we also took steps primarily based upon my initiative but also based upon advice that I was receiving from an individual who has experience in basically clandestine-type operations that you can’t communicate with your cell phone. And you have to be careful where you’re communicating because there are line-of-sight devices that can intercept verbal communication.

Commissioner DiGregorio
Thank you.
Commissioner Massie
I have a question about— You mentioned that you really value your relationship with your wife, but at one point, because you were raising some issues about what the public authority was saying that it created some tension that eventually seems to have improved. That’s my understanding. Because you decided jointly not to get the second dose after you provided the information.

Now, my question is— After you decided to become more involved in the Freedom Movement, did you get support from your wife or was that creating some
tension?

Robert Holloway
My wife is very supportive. My wife is not as, shall I say, maybe active in investigating these types of things that I am. My wife, in fairness to her, but like a lot of people, I believe, was afraid.

And under ordinary circumstances, if I were to say, “Let’s do some due diligence before we engage in a medical procedure for our children,” I don’t think her reaction would have been what it was. But she was really afraid. And things definitely improved once I agreed to getting the children vaccinated for the first dose. She did move in terms of her viewpoints once I provided her with information that I received through my physician source as well as from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. To answer your question, I’m sorry, it’s maybe a bit roundabout. But, yeah, she did support me in my involvement with the Freedom Convoy protest.

Commissioner Massie
I have another question about the censorship. It does have consequences, but in your experience, what would you say was the most damning consequences of censorship in what you’ve been through during this COVID crisis?

Robert Holloway
When I use the concept censorship, with respect to this pandemic and the governmental response, I think it’s important to be clear that at least I’m not thinking of just government censorship. It was a chilling environment across the board,

[00:55:00]

whether it was in legacy media, whether it was in public health authority messaging, whether it was, I believe, in the judiciary. I’m sure that there was active censorship, but there was also a lot of self-censorship.

One of our biggest failures as a society in dealing with this pandemic, in my view, is that what we needed to do to have the best chance of successfully, or at least optimally, dealing with it was to have open conversations. But that wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening across the board. Not only was it not happening in legacy media where the same individuals were being interviewed again and again and the same messaging was happening, and the same individuals from public health were speaking and the same messaging was happening.

If we recall, the opposition parties of all the provincial legislatures and the federal House of Commons were barely doing anything. The judiciary was making decisions that were consistently supporting the government mandates and regulations. And to speak to your neighbours, sometimes your friends, was a perilous activity because of the polarity, the emotion.

A lot of the public health authority response to the pandemic was to be characterized by the war metaphor: this is a war against this virus; we are going to eradicate it. And there’s also another saying in war: loose lips sink ships. But you know what? In war, the enemy has ears and a brain. When you’re fighting a virus that has neither ears nor brain, surely, we can have conversations so that the best information—the brightest individuals, the ones that have the knowledge, the background, the experience—they may be right, they may be wrong, but they should all be heard. Because we are all better off for it: me, the public, deciding what’s good for my family, what’s good for me, what’s good for my community. Without having open dialogue, without being able to know what is being discussed, cripples our ability to make those decisions and our societal ability to function properly and to deal with pandemics in a rational fashion, in my humble opinion.

Commissioner Massie
Thank you.

Kassy Baker
Are there any further questions from the commission?

Commissioner Kaikkonen
Good afternoon. I’m just wondering— You said earlier in your testimony that the courts were closed. Do you have any information on how the courts being closed impacted those who were either going because they felt they were innocent and unfairly charged with whatever? Or the impact of the passage of time, and they weren’t getting their case heard, their voices weren’t able to speak, they weren’t able to get justice. Do you have any ideas, since you kind of crossed the lines with the people who were involved in organizing protests, of the impact of those people when the courts were closed?

Robert Holloway
I don’t. Many matters that would involve criminal charges against protesters and protest organizers,

[01:00:00]

criminal lawyers would handle that. I’m not a criminal lawyer, and so I haven’t been involved in that aspect of things. So I can’t comment on that.

I can comment on the civil side because that’s the type of lawyer I am. I’m basically a civil litigator. I can comment that, certainly, in Ontario, where I do quite a bit of litigation, that the backlog for many basic types of civil matters are unbelievably long. Sometimes you’re looking 12 months to have a motion heard. It could be years before you have a trial that’s set down. So I can comment a little bit about on the civil side that it definitely caused backlogs. I think in Manitoba, we’re getting back to a fairly good schedule in terms of civil matters. But in Ontario, in my experience, it’s still pretty delayed, all as a result of pandemic-related measures.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
And my second question is, it’s kind of a line we use in education, some of the critics of the education system: that it looks like education remains, but it’s no longer education. Given that you looked at the CDC results and Health Canada results, and there’s all these discrepancies, could we actually extend that to health care: that it looks like health care, but maybe it’s no longer health care, in your opinion?

Robert Holloway
Well, my understanding of the legal requirement to administer a medical procedure by a health care practitioner on a patient is that informed consent is required. And without
being informed, there can’t be consent. And if there’s a medical procedure that’s performed without consent, that can be tantamount to assault.

Commissioner Kaikkonen
Thank you.

Kassy Baker
Are there any further questions from the commission? On behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry, we’d like to thank you for your testimony, Mr. Holloway.

Robert Holloway
Thank you.

[01:02:59]

Final Review and Approval: Margaret Phillips, August 10, 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. Holloway is a lawyer who in during the lockdowns took the opportunity to do some research into COVID-19 on peer-reviewed studies from reputable universities and journals. It was clear that it was individuals who had two or more serious underlying health conditions, combined with those that were at a certain age threshold, that were at risk, and children under the age of 18 had basically zero risk.

COVID and issues relating to COVID were a daily news item, and not being candid and forthright about the demographics of who was being affected by this virus. It was only publicly talked about six months later. Despite this he took the first and second dosage of the vaccine based on public health and media urges to do so for the community, for the elderly and immunology promised. After much debate, he and his wife agreed to have the children vaccinated. After hearing that there was a gag order from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manitoba that directed physicians to not depart from the narrative that’s being put forward by public health authorities in Manitoba, he and his wife decided not to go ahead with the second vaccine.

It eventually became clear to him that the mandates were completely disconnected from what the science was saying about the virus, and the efficacy of these vaccines and he became a part of the Freedom Convoy protests in Winnipeg. He felt it was a remarkable, organic event which was not being reported on mainstream legacy media. This experience urged him to supply legal and strategic advice. Almost everything that was eventually reported in main stream media, with respect to the Freedom Convoy protests in Winnipeg, was wrong. February 14, 2022 the federal government invokes the Emergencies Act, and prompted by the reports of arrests, fines and asset freezing for those who supported the Freedom Convoy, he took certain measures including the withdrawal and personal concealment of thousands of dollars in cash. For the first time in his life this country, that he thought was his country, was against him. He still feels that there needs to be some serious reckoning by those who were responsible for managing the governmental response to this pandemic. Without having open dialogue, without being able to know what is being discussed, it cripples our ability to make decisions and our societal ability to function properly and to deal with pandemics in a rational fashion.