It’s still a sombre anniversary at 25...

Reflections on 9/11 and Warmington on the Allison Inquiry.

I was sitting at my kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal in my upper on Cumberland Avenue in Montreal when the news came across the radio. A plane had struck the North Tower at 8:46am on September 11, 2001 and at first no one knew what was happening.

Perhaps this was a commercial flight gone wrong, an accident.

At 9:03 the second plane hit the South Tower and we all realized that this wasn’t an accident.

At that moment, the world changed forever.

I was working in radio in Montreal at the time but was off that day. The day was spent watching the footage of the plane crashes over and over again.

Then the collapse of the towers.

The death, the destruction, the heartbreak.

Like so many, my then wife and I watched in shock and horror. It was only after a few hours of us being glued to the screen, struggling to understand what we were watching, that we realized our 16 month old son was watching along with us.

Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that our son was impacted in any negative way by the exposure to those events.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years.

I thought this video by Pierre Poilievre was very well done.

And then there is Shuv…

I first met Shuvaloy Majumdar, Shuv as most of us call him, back around 2008. He was working in Iraq and Afghanistan trying to help set up democratic institutions. Obviously it didn’t work, but not because he didn’t put the effort in.

For years, before he was elected, Shuv was one of my go to people to talk about foreign affairs issues. He’s a smart man on the file and over the years I’ve benefitted from his wise guidance on these issues just like John Baird and Stephen Harper.

I can’t think of any bigger defender of Canada’s freedom and democracy, our heritage and Westminster style of government than Shuv.

Here’s Shuv’s tribute on 9/11.

And if you have time, here’s a Ted Talk that Shuv gave on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The Allison Inquiry is wrapping up…

Conservative MP Dean Allison has been holding hearings over the past several days in Ottawa looking at the issue of vaccine injuries from COVID.

Vaccine injuries are officially called Adverse Effects Following Immunization or AEFI. There were 54,569 AEFIs reported as of 3 March 2023. Officials deemed that 43,844 were non-serious, while 10,685 were deemed serious reactions.

My colleague Joe Warmington has been writing about the inquiry testimony over the past few days.

You can read his columns here and here.

Here is Patricia Leidl, one of the witnesses, speaking with National Post.