Police State: Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia has fully descended into a police state with a Trudeau liberal at its’ helm. The Party that gave us the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has systematically dissolved the very fabric of its being! The following account by Mrs. Lorna MacLean and describes events following her sons’ arrival at the Halifax Airport on May 7th, 2021 when both mother and son were illegally detained by airport security.

For a party that advocates refugee family reunification, any empathy for Canadian families during these trying times is non-existent. Charter Rights have been thrown to the wayside and Communism has come to roost in Nova Scotia. “Our True North Strong and Free” has indeed been muzzled, tied down and shackled!

Nova Scotia is descending into a police state. The events that take place in this experienced account take place 14 hours BEFORE May 8, 2021 new guidance’s in the Nova Scotia Health Protection Act. The Act since amended May 14, 2021.

This testimony appears as I found it, without revisions.

Lorna MacLean

Below is a timeline of the events that took place at the Halifax Airport on May 7th, 2021. It has taken me 41/2 days to settle myself down enough to get this written down so that none of what happened to us will be forgotten.

We have been home now for 3 days and it has taken me all of those 3 days to order my thoughts, get my emotions somewhat under control and come to terms with what happened to Zach and myself at Stanfield International Airport in Halifax on Friday, May 7th. Zach flew in from BC to return home after having been laid off from his job due to Covid. Let me just say that the reasons for coming back to the province were within allowed guidelines when he boarded his flight and he had carried out all that was required of him before he boarded that flight. Those things were a negative Covid test and filling out an online form called the Nova Scotia Safe Check In Form. At some point during his flight however, a meeting had been held and the rules changed. I only found out later that night after we had been locked up in a hotel room with a guard posted outside the door, that those changes were not supposed to even come into effect until 8AM the following morning, but I digress. I drove up to Halifax from Cape Breton to pick him up at the airport and arrived at 5:45PM. After circling the airport twice and not seeing him on the third trip around a female Halifax Police officer flagged me over to ask if I was Lorna. I said yes and she continued to tell me that Zach would not be getting into the province and he was being sent back to BC and that Border Control personnel would like to speak with me. My heart had sunk to me ankles by this point because I hadn’t seen my son in 21/2 years and didn’t know if they would even let me talk to him. I parked and went inside the door the ‘Barer Of Bad News’ had disappeared into and clapped eyes on Zach about 150ft. away. I could tell immediately how upset he was and that he had given up the fight. He was being held by 2 Halifax police, the female and another male officer, a commissionaire and 2 Border Control personnel. I walked right past all of them saying nobody better even try to stop me from giving my son a hug because I haven’t seen him in 21/2 years. The female cop says rather snottily “Well you know the rules!”. I chose to ignore her completely and went to Zach and gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and whispered everything was going to be alright. He said “No Mom it’s not. They are sending me back to BC. I said, the fuck they are, and walked around him and went to talk to the Border Control people. At this point the female cop approached Zach and said “Pfff, if I hadn’t seen my mother in 21/2 years I’d be in tears.” She had been badgering Zach before I got there as well and she’s really fucking lucky that I didn’t hear what she said! She must have realized that she had pushed things to far and she disappeared before I could square off with the bitch. After talking to the Border people I had been informed that it would be Saturday before anything could be resolved and that I would have to come back the next day again, to pick him up and that Zach would now need a piece of mail with his name and the address home here on it as well as a full time job to enter the province!! I was livid! I said I had to borrow the vehicle that I used to come and get him and I couldn’t drive back to Cape Breton and then back again to Halifax the next day and the next bus he could get wouldn’t even be leaving the airport until Sunday at 3:45PM. I said that vehicle is parked 2minutes walk from here and we can be off airport property and in Cape Breton 4 hours from now where we are all set up to quarantine for 14 days. The answer was a hard “NO”! They all stood there and watched completely unmoved as I called my 80 year old Uncle and had to tell him that I couldn’t bring Zach home before the next day and apologized profusely for not being able to bring his only transportation back to him that night. At this point we were escorted to the Alt Hotel across the street from the terminal where we were locked in a room under guard for 21 hours. They were calling themselves escorts but make no mistake, they were most definitely guards, all ex military and if you so much as touched the door handle they were on you. So here we are trapped in a room with only 2 bars of wifi and the Department of Health is sending emails to Zach which they are waiting for him to respond to and he can’t get his phone to send his response back to them! By this point I was like a caged animal and mad as a fucking hornet. I threw open the door and went out to the guard and said the Department of Health is sending my son emails and awaiting his response, we have 2 bars of wifi in our concrete cell and his phone won’t send due to the lack of wifi in our room! He shrugged his shoulders and said “Well I don’t know what to do!” He said call the front desk. So I called the front desk and spoke the Internment Camp Commandant that was working the night shift and explained to her that we had a problem with the wifi and the Department of Health was waiting for him to respond immediately. Her response was that he would just have to wait because she was there alone and she would have to get on a ladder to reset the wifi. I said did you not hear me? Someone at the Dept. of Health is sitting at a computer awaiting his response with info. that they needed!! She said, “I don’t know what you want me to do about it.” Needless to say he got no wifi that night and the Dept. of Health got no response from him. By now I was fit to be tied and Zach was on my phone trying to get all this bull shit made public and someone tagged CBC News Nova Scotia. He even had a lawyer giving him advice as to what his rights were and the general consensus was that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was being trampled at every turn. I called home and spoke to my husband to tell him what was happening and to get him to search around for a piece of mail with Zach’s name and our home address on it. Fortunately Student Loan had sent something to him about a month before and it was still on the kitchen table. A friend of Zach’s had just recently moved in next door to us and I said take the letter over there and get him to take a picture of it with his phone and have him send it to Zach’s phone via Facebook. As luck would have it, his friend had just started a new business installing swimming pools and sent Zach an email offering him as full time job as well as his contact information and a photo of his business card to give to the Dept. of Health and the Border Control folks. At this point both Zach and I were exhausted and asked to be taken out for one last smoke for the night before we crashed. At 6AM I woke up to the sound of my blood pressure pounding in my ears. I hadn’t brought my meds with me thinking that I was going to be home before I would need to take it. By now however I had missed one dose of my blood pressure meds and 2 doses of my diabetic meds. By 7AM Zach was up and we asked to taken out for a smoke.  On the way back to our cell, I had what I can only assume was a panic attack and became dizzy and couldn’t catch my breath. My blood pressure was still pounding in my ears and I thought I was going down. I stumbled back outside and I’m hanging over a post that was outside the door of the hotel. Our guard just stood there and watched. He never asked me if I was alright or if I needed help,  nothing. When I recovered enough to go back inside we stopped at the Commandants desk to inquire about the wifi and he said, “Why don’t you try sending it from here as the router is right above us here in the lobby. I said are you kidding me? Nobody thought of this last night when the Dept. of Health was online waiting for him to respond??!! I was incredulous!! At any rate Zach finally was able to send his responses to the questions that he had been asked the night before and the picture of the letter with his name and address on it as well as the job offer to the Dept. of Health after which we were marched back up to our cell to be locked away again. By the time we got to our room Zach had received a response back and was told to show the pictures and the job offer to Border Control and that that would be it. Out I go to our jailer again and tell him that we need to go back over to see Bor der Control with this new information at the direction of the Dept. of Health. Our jailer said Oh I don’t know about that! He said you can’t go back over to the airport! You’ll have to call the front desk. Before I could call, the dayshift Camp Commandant arrived at the door with the phone charger that I had asked to borrow and I told him that we had to see the Border Control folks again at the direction of the Dept. of Health. I also added that I had missed a dose of my blood pressure meds and two doses of my diabetic meds at which point he said to me that if I had a medical emergency that I was free to call 911 and that we couldn’t go back to the airport. I said that he was told to do so by the Dept. of Health and we could either be taken over to meet them or I was going to call a Lawyer and the CBC News and that I was sure some reporter would love to get his teeth into a story like this. That was when our guard let it slip that they wouldn’t be in until 11AM and that they would be busy as they were meeting a flight. With that I said that we would be there before the flight got in and it was going to happen. At 10:40AM we asked to go out for a smoke and reminded our guard about going over to the airport which he rather reluctantly it seemed, agreed to. We went back up to our room long enough for Zach to get his phone and off we went where we sat outside of a darkened office for 15 minutes before he finally decided we should head upstairs mumbling something about the fact that we would likely have to wait until all the flight passengers cleared Border Control. I wanted to scream but held my tongue at this point. With a quick look at Zach’s phone at the picture of the mail with his name and address on it and the email with the job offer and confirming with the guy that he had in fact offered Zach a job, we were finally released from captivity. Keep in mind that I am aware that we are in the middle of a pandemic and they are trying to keep it under control but treating people like criminals is not the way to do this!! There has to be a better way than this. All of these rules which are being thrown down without any thought given to the people being affected by them. No support systems in place to offer any kind of support to the people that are being held hostage, with no recourse but to comply with what we/they are ORDERED to do. There is nobody on site from the Dept. of Health, nor are there any contact numbers for people to call except a message telling you to leave contact info. and someone would try to get back to you within 24 hours and the wifi is so poor you can’t contact them electronically either!! There is no way to find out when Border Control will be in or how to contact them. I should not have had to threaten to call a news outlet to be take to see Border Control after being told to do by the Dept. of Health! Why are they enforcing rules that aren’t supposed to take effect for another 14 hours. How can they expect people to have all their things in order upon arrival in Nova Scotia when they change the God Damned rules while people are in the air flying??!! Why in hell do hotel desk clerks have so much authority and act like prison wardens?? The level of incompetence and a total lack of compassion for those who’s rights are being trampled and abused is overwhelming. I have never felt so violated and betrayed in all my life by my own government who were perfectly willing to send my son back to BC with no job to go to and nowhere to live! I am still in shock over this entire nightmare and it is something that I will never be able to forget! We were not alone in our plight either. A young guard that was working the night that we were locked up told us of one man who was here to start a brewery from  the Czech Republic, who had been locked in his room and forgotten about for 8 days. Nobody even asked if he’d like to go outside to get a bit of fresh air!!! So this young guard went and knocked on his door and asked him if he would like to be escorted outside for some fresh air and then got shit upon from great heights for doing so. The entire 7th floor of the Alt Hotel is being used to house Covid detainees. This is not right in any way shape or form. CBC Live Wire, these are the answers to all the questions you didn’t ask Zach when called him on Sunday Morning!! I am mad enough to chew steel and spit fucking nails over this whole debacle. This is not the end of this by a long shot and rest assured that Zach and I will be shouting this abuse of rights and freedoms to anyone willing to listen. If CBC don’t follow up then we will be moving on to another news agency that will!! There is nothing right about the way people are being treated upon entry into this province and especially not when we are talking about citizens who were born and raised here!!! To the female police officer that saw fit to brow beat and berate a young man who had just lost his job due to this virus and was left with no other choice but to move home, FUCK YOU BITCH!!  I guess we know why you are on airport patrol because the streets are no place for you that’s for damned sure. Thank you for taking the time to read through this long rant but I wanted to make sure that people are aware of what is going on behind the scenes in this province. It is a total nightmare of epic proportions! I forgot to mention that when we finally checked out the desk commandant told me that I had 20 minutes to get off of Airport property. I said in 20 minutes I’ll be 15 minutes down the highway!!

Editor’s note: At the time of press, there are no shortages of international flights between Halifax and the rest of the world. Here are many listed flights between Halifax, NS and Shanghai, China. Are these travelers being forced to experience similar indignities?