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Shawn Buckley: How Prayer and Resolve Launched the Inquiry

Day 4 · 7:50:47 · Shawn Buckley

  • 🙏 Buckley thanks God and recounts meeting MP Allison after a Parliament Hill event, then Holy Spirit prompting a follow-up.
  • ⚖️ Allison prayed, accepted political risk, and with spouses agreed around May to hold a listening inquiry before rooms vanished.
  • 📰 In under a month they built legal structure, website, and a June 4 press conference that quickly drew massive online reach.

Inquiry counsel’s closing traces the spiritual and logistical birth of the Allison Inquiry.

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Transcript

Shawn Buckley · 7:50:47

So Jasmine is our last witness. Um, Chairperson is allowing me to give some closing comments, and then the Chair is going to give some closing comments. And, um, I need to thank some people for enabling this inquiry to happen. And the first person I need to thank is I need to thank our God. This inquiry has a really unusual start. My wife Theresa and I, we traveled to Ottawa last year on a different venture, and we had an event on Parliament Hill on October 23rd. And a mutual friend who is in the gallery said, oh, you guys need to stay and meet with MP Dean Allison. And so we stayed till Monday and we met with MP Dean Allison, Theresa and I, and, you know, we, we all got along well and had a nice visit.

Shawn Buckley · 7:51:57

It was just an initial thing, and, and MP Allison had I've been wanting to hold an inquiry just to listen to vaccine-injured Canadians. Nothing more than that. Just listen. And it was interesting because he would say things like, why can't I listen to Canadians? What's wrong with listening to Canadians? Which is telegraphing that he doesn't feel that it's possible politically for him to do that. And Theresa and I, who, you know, have some experience in putting things like this on, had said, well, if you decide to do that, then we may be willing to help you because it's a big commitment, as all the volunteers know, to put something like this on. So that was that. We parted ways and a couple of months later, Holy Spirit was prompting Teresa to contact Dean and, and say, hey, do you want to do this?

Shawn Buckley · 7:53:02

Do you want to do this? And so we started having conversations. And in fact, you know, one, I, a person that I've come to really appreciate, you know, we're on a Zoom call and just thought this was a terrible idea, right? And, you know, but Dean was kind of excited about it. But we got to this point where We're on a call with Dean and Theresa and I, and MP Allison is explaining really why this can't happen, why we can't have this inquiry. And so I stopped him and I just asked, well, will you go and pray about it? Because the real issue isn't why we can't do this. The real issue is, are we supposed to be doing this? Is this Is this what we're supposed to be doing? And so Teresa and I thought that it was finished, that there was going to be no inquiry. And then about 10 days later, we're coming, driving back to Alberta from BC, and Dean contacts us and says, no, I, I, I think I'm supposed to do this regardless of the cost.

Shawn Buckley · 7:54:10

You see, you know, when you make a decision like this, you don't know what will follow. How is his caucus going to respond? Is he going to be kicked out of the party? That was very reasonable for him to assume that the mainstream media would try to make him look like a monkey. And even a year or two ago, that would have happened, and it would have succeeded. And then Theresa and I had to, had to pray for a week, and we had to meet with Dean's wife too. She had to be on board. And the four of us met a week later and just decided, no, we're supposed to do this. Now, this is probably around May 7th, May 8th, and we had to do this before Parliament returned or we wouldn't get a committee room. And then, and then you kind of got to back up. So, okay, so we're this we and, well, okay, you got to have a couple of press conferences. People have to learn you exist. To even to apply, and then you got to organize. So yeah, we picked June 4th to announce at a press conference in Parliament Hill.

Shawn Buckley · 7:55:16

So less than a month, we had to start organizing volunteers, we had to create a legal structure to collect and disburse funds, we had to create a website. I think the French website was probably finished 4:00 a.m. the morning we held the press conference and we held the press conference and we don't know how the world's going to react, but it absolutely resonated every step of the way. God's gone before us in this. Dean made a couple of posts after the press conference on Facebook and in 24 hours had over a million views and it's just skyrocketed with every press conference. This just started to resonate. And I don't know where we are now, but I mean, I was told like we were 7th on in the world, I think trending globally a couple of days ago. Like, it's just been absolutely amazing. And I'll say without meaningful mainstream media coverage, because there has been some, even if it's been negative, some has been positive and some has been negative.

Shawn Buckley · 7:56:22

But for the first time, The issue of COVID-19 vaccine injuries has been raised, and so I'd just like to acknowledge the person first.