Re: Letter: Time to stand up for your rights
I too am a proud Canadian. My father was in the Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. I have lived and worked in three countries and had the absolute privilege of visiting over ten countries. I have to take issue with the limited view of rights and freedoms as described by Scott Morrison in his letter to the editor.
While he mentions not infringing on other people’s charter rights, he does not seem to understand what that means. There are limits to our freedoms. We have the right to get drunk, but we do not have the right to drink and drive and businesses have the right to deny service to an inebriated person. We can speed and drive without a seatbelt, but there are consequences and we may lose our license if we choose to do so repeatedly.
Why? Because to do so not only puts ourselves in danger, it puts others in danger. Why is smoking banned in public places? Smokers not only put their own health in danger, they put others in danger.
When our choices put the rest of the public in undue danger, being free of logical consequences are not protected by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms as some have found by legal challenges earlier in the pandemic.
Vaccination mandates are not new. I had vaccine requirements to attend school, to work in health care and to travel.
I could have refused to get vaccinated, but would have had limits on education, employment and travel. I have a right to remain unvaccinated, but there are limits to those rights.
How do unvaccinated people put others in danger? Take a real hard look at our health-care system. In over 40 years working in health care, in three countries, I have never seen a more serious situation.
Our hospitals are overwhelmed. That is a fact. You can’t imagine what it took for the request from health-care workers to bring in the military to assist.
Albertans deserve a health-care system for all, not one that is shut down to take care of COVID patients. Are you OK with trauma and emergency cases competing with COVID cases for ventilators and intensive care unit beds (ICU)?
With public pleas for oxygen meters for pregnant COVID patients? Surgeries, which have been backlogged throughout the pandemic are now cancelled, affecting everyone from children to adults who desperately need heart, cancer, kidney and transplant surgeries to name a few. Clinics to test and treat these conditions have been closed.
Thousands of Albertans denied their right to healthcare because hospitals are having to switch to deal with COVID. The province does not have hundreds of skilled ICU workers sitting at home unemployed to call up to increase capacity and it takes months to gain those skills.
Could they have prepared months ago? I doubt anyone expected the recent collapse in leadership that led to our highest ICU numbers in the history of the pandemic or that a segment of Albertans would decide that it had nothing to do with them and their personal freedom was more important than the well-being of all Albertans.
The fact is, the unvaccinated are the majority of those hospitalized COVID cases. That is a reality. In choosing to remain unvaccinated, and move freely about their business, they are affecting other Albertans to an unacceptable degree.
They are unduly trampling on the rights of Albertans needing other care. They have the absolute right to remain unvaccinated. But as a consequence, strategies are needed to slow the spread in folks who are most likely to have severe outcomes and need those hospital and ICU beds.
To repeat, people who choose to remain unvaccinated, and that is their right, are the people who have the most severe outcomes and need the hospital and ICU beds. And right now, their numbers are exceeding the ability of hospitals to provide safe care and their numbers are unduly affecting Albertans being denied care for other reasons.
So whose Charter rights are being most negatively affected? Who is suffering the most? Is having healthcare denied of less importance than having movements temporarily restricted? I would suggest not.
S. M. Hogan,
Edmonton
