Conservative MP’s comments about vaccination, COVID-19 spread ‘not appropriate’: O’Toole

OTTAWA —
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is condemning comments made by one of his MPs regarding mandatory vaccinations and the risk associated with the COVID-19 virus.

O’Toole was referring to remarks made by MP Marilyn Gladu on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday, wherein she took issue with vaccine disclosure, argued against mandatory vaccinations, and called into question the severity of the virus.

“It’s important for members of Parliament to advocate for their constituents who may be losing a job or may need reasonable accommodation, we do that all the time on a range of issues. But it’s very different to cause confusion with respect to the health and well-being of Canadians and Ms. Gladu’s interview did that yesterday,” he told reporters on Monday.

“It’s not appropriate at a time we should be answering questions about vaccine hesitancy, not creating new questions.”

Gladu has been the face of the new intra-party caucus to defend the rights of those unvaccinated.

She wouldn’t say whether she was vaccinated, citing “medical privacy purposes.”

“People are being forced to disclose this. And that is another issue that we need to talk about because what’s next? What next, will you be forced to disclose about your medical history?” she told Question Period.

She then compared COVID-19 to the polio disease that spread in the first half of the 20th century, but said the novel coronavirus doesn’t pose the same “frequency of risk.”

“In terms of the risk, people that got polio, many of them died and many of them were crippled, and that is not the same frequency of risk that we see with COVID-19…I’m just receiving the information from medical experts that talk about the relative risk. I’m not a doctor myself.”

O’Toole said his team will address this but underlined that the Conservative Party encourages all Canadians to get vaccinated.

More details to come…