Measles outbreak can be traced to Trudeau politicizing COVID vaccines, Tory MP claims
OTTAWA — An Alberta Conservative MP said she thinks the measles outbreak in her province can be traced back to the COVID pandemic and loss of trust in vaccines due to the federal government's lack of transparency about their risks.
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'Years after COVID, broken trust in government health directives has not been addressed for many Canadians,' Michelle Rempel Garner, formerly the party's health critic during the pandemic, said in a lengthy social media post.
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Rempel Garner said the downplaying of 'rare but serious' side effects of COVID vaccinations by the Liberal government, led by then prime minister Justin Trudeau, spurred broader vaccine hesitancy, leading to a drop in childhood measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccinations.
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'(F)or individuals already harbouring concerns about vaccines such as for MMR, the lack of initial transparency on potential side effects related to the COVID-19 vaccine — or muddled public health messaging — likely reinforced narratives that deterred their vaccine uptake,' she wrote.
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One recent study found that two-dose MMR coverage fell by more than 10 per cent among seven-year-olds in four provinces, including Alberta, and the Yukon between 2019 and 2023.
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Coverage fell to 75.6 per cent in 2023, nearly 20 points below the 95 per cent needed to maintain herd immunity.
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Rempel Garner, currently the party's immigration critic, didn't respond to a National Post request for an interview about her claim.
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The province reported Monday that it has seen 1,314 cases since the start of March, 26 more than the count recorded across 39 states by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Rempel Garner's post said Trudeau deserves much of the blame for making vaccinations a polarizing wedge issue before the 2021 federal election.
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'Trudeau dined out on using dehumanizing and politically loaded terms to describe the vaccine hesitant, including 'anti-vaxxer',' writes Rempel Garner.
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Rempel Garner says Trudeau made even more vaccine-hesitant Canadians 'dig in' when he doubled down on this rhetoric during the early 2022 convoy protests.
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'The Liberal government has never issued a public apology for its vehemently hostile rhetoric toward vaccine-hesitant individuals … As a result, it has entrenched a partisan divide in society, where vaccination status is viewed as a political virtue signal rather than a public health objective to be pursued collaboratively,' she writes.
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