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Q&A: September 2021 Email, Anti-Vaxxer Label and COVID Gag Order

Day 3 · 8:25:51 · Cst. Helen Grus · Dean Allison

  • 📧 Her September 2021 email questioning medical-status declarations and looming mandates was leaked and branded her a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer.
  • 🤐 A supervisor ordered that COVID never be discussed in the SACCA office, leaving her unsure whom to trust with the baby-death data.
  • 🎯 She acknowledges the email painted a target on her before the formal vaccine mandate took effect.

How an early email led to ostracism and a workplace gag on COVID talk.

← Q&A: Tribunal Composition, Fellow Detectives’ Concerns and Autopsy Review Failures | Q&A: Mandates, Ostracism and Liberating Support from Colleagues →

Transcript

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:25:51

Yes, and that would actually go back to September 9th, 2021. I had sent out an email to our organization initially for my chain of command all the way up the ranks, but also on what's called a miscellaneous board to all my colleagues. I voiced some concerns. That email is actually very public. It got leaked out.

Dean Allison · 8:26:10

Let me guess, it has to do with getting vaccinated?

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:26:13

That had to do with, yes. And I just raised concerns that before anybody, actually that was at that time, all members were supposed to declare their status. Their medical status, which again, as a police officer, to get somebody else's medical status, we either need consent or warrant. And that's how I addressed it. I said, you know, and for all these mandates to be imposed, it was a lengthy email. So that put that— I guess that would have flagged me in, in the service with a certain group of people. I received a lot of Many, many officers and civilians reached out to me after that, thanking me that they were not alone in their concerns over what was transpiring with, with the lockdowns and the looming mandates. But that definitely, I think, put me on— and it came out in tribunal. Some of the officers who testified after reading that email concluded that I'm a right-wing conspiracy theorist.

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:27:15

I was also called an anti-masker. An anti-vaxxer, and all of a sudden the names started flying around about who I was. I was told by my sergeant to not talk about, um, and actually I received an email from my supervisor, my higher supervisor, to never discuss COVID in the SACCA office. So when these concerns came up with these, with the doubling, tripling of baby deaths and with the two babies that had collapsed and died in their parents' arms, I was concerned who to go to. But it, yeah, it was actually because I had that meeting scheduled, the town hall meeting, I thought, well, here we go, I'm going to present it to the Chief of Police.

Dean Allison · 8:27:55

Did all these things transpire after Ottawa Police Service had put on, um, you know, an order or mandate for everybody to be vaccinated?