CALGARY, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – A group of 176 active and non-active WestJet employees seeking “justice” over COVID jab mandates have successfully filed its Statement of Claim against the airline and government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a federal court.
“Collaborating with airlines and corporate stakeholders, the Canadian Government implemented punitive and divisive Covid-19 vaccination mandates, creating a two-tier society stoked only by fear,” said the group Cause For Action, Justice for WestJetters, in a press release sent to LifeSiteNews.
“We respect and support people’s right to choose and we have no grievance with those who made a personal decision to receive the Covid-19 injection.”
In the press release, the group says it is now “176 members strong,” representing both employed and terminated WestJet employees from pilots, flight attendants, contact center agents, customer service agents, and more.
“On October 5, 2022, Cause For Action formally filed legal action in the Federal Court, to hold multiple parties accountable for their actions with respect to COVID-19 measures,” the group said.
Cause For Action says its “objection” to the COVID mandates “lies with the coercion, discipline, and denial of informed consent used to achieve mass vaccination. Forcing consent under duress is unethical, unconstitutional, illegal and by no means Canadian.”
“We are very pleased to announce the Statement of Claim for the WestJet Airlines and Federal Government legal action has been filed … Our primary goal is to seek justice for WestJet employees impacted by these over-reaching mandates. Most importantly, to set precedence for all Canadians and future generations,” the group said.
Cause For Action is suing the WestJet Group, WestJet Airlines, Encore, Swoop, WestJet Vacations along with the federal government.
In July, group spokesperson Rob Simpson said to LifeSiteNews that the “boldness and courage required for an active employee to call upon that feeling that they have inside to push against this and actively sue their employer is monumental.”
“People are just crippled with fear, of what sort of reprisal might happen, but the fear is unfounded there will be reprisal legally anyway. Someone who’s actively employed at WestJet fearing reprisal from joining this lawsuit, that’s against the law to fire somebody,” he added.
Simpson worked for WestJet for 11 years, most recently as a training captain on Boeing 737s, the aircraft that make up the bulk of the airline’s fleet.
Cause For Action’s legal counsel is Alberta-based civil liberties lawyer Leighton Grey. He has led counsel in a variety of high-profile lawsuits fighting COVID vaccine mandates, such as cases involving the Calgary Firefighters, Canadian National Railway, and Canadian Pacific Railway.
Starting October 1, the Canadian federal government ended all remaining COVID mandates in Canada regarding travel. Masks on planes and trains are optional, there is no more COVID testing, and vaccine-free Canadians will no longer be subject to mandatory quarantine.
Canada’s much-detested ArriveCAN travel app will be also made optional, and a mandate that foreigners must be jabbed to enter Canada is expected to be gone.
Last year, all Canadian airlines in place mandatory jab policies for all staff, even before the government made it mandatory. Many lost their jobs as a result, including thousands in the airline industry.
Cause For Action has created a GiveSendGo fundraiser to raise money for its legal defense, which Simpson says has been very helpful in getting some people who don’t have the means, to join the lawsuit.
Cause For Action says WestJet failed to provide a safe work environment
According to Cause For Action, they are suing WestJet because the airline forwent its “responsibility to provide a safe work environment and to protect its employees from such egregious assaults on their rights and freedoms in the workplace.”
“Instead of pushing back against the Government’s unlawful orders, WestJet embraced and marketed the narrative with fervor. Their aggressive enforcement resulted in unconstitutional abuse of thousands of people,” the group says.
Cause For Action added that “simply following orders has not historically been, nor will it be, an excuse to violate human rights and informed consent.”
The group says that due to emerging evidence regarding the COVID jabs’ negative health effects, it is “abundantly clear that a great deal of scientific information was never communicated to the public.”
“New information related to the pillars of informed consent become available daily. Pharmaceutical companies asked for 75 years to reveal the trial data used to receive emergency use authority, thankfully a Judge denied that request. The FDA was ordered to release to the public all 329,000 pages of safety data used to license the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by March 2022,” said the group.
“The data is indisputable evidence that the following fundamental hallmarks of informed consent were never achieved before we were subjected to WestJet Group’s Covid-19 vaccine policy: the voluntary nature of a decision, and disclosure of pertinent information.”
Trudeau’s COVID travel rules led to multiple lawsuits, many of which are still pending.
Recently, the Canadian group Free to Fly, made up of pilots and airline workers who lost their jobs for not complying with airline COVID vaccine mandates, blasted WestJet’s rehiring process for the vaccine-free as unethical, hypocritical, and a violation of one’s rights.
Free to Fly highlighted serious concerns over the company’s rehiring process for the vaccine free.
Rehiring demands include to be given one’s job back, an employee must agree to “forgo a claim for back pay during your absence,” as well as agreeing, “that in the event that the vaccine mandate is reimplemented by the Federal Government, that you will agree to being placed on unpaid leave.”