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Sudbury Ontario Party candidate Jason LaFace has posted recent videos to social media in which he also calls the COVID-19 pandemic a \u2018fake-demic\u2019<\/p>\n
SUDBURY – Jason LaFace is angry about a lot of things \u2014 a point made abundantly clear in recent videos and written posts the Ontario Party candidate for Sudbury has made to social media.<\/p>\n
According to LaFace, Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ community members are \u201cnut bars.\u201d He also uses these groups to exemplify extremists who \u201cuse a fake-demic to attack our kids. For years, you\u2019ve been going after our kids with your public health unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The connection is unclear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contrary to LaFace\u2019s assertion, leading medical experts<\/a> throughout the world agree that the global COVID-19 pandemic is real. The World Health Organization estimates the death toll<\/a> at more than 6.2 million people. The local death toll<\/a> is 149.<\/p>\n LaFace, a central organizer<\/a> of the Northern Ontario leg of the so-called Freedom Convoy to Ottawa<\/a> earlier this year in opposition to COVID-related mandates, blamed Black Lives Matter activists for problems that arose in Ottawa when the convoy arrived.<\/p>\n Sudbury.com asked LaFace to provide evidence for this and the other numerous claims he has made on social media, but he declined to do so.<\/p>\n Instead of answering any of the long list of questions emailed to him, LaFace cautioned party leader Derek Sloan against paying attention to Sudbury.com, which he claims is a \u201ctypical left-wing radical media outlet\u201d that is \u201coperated by members of ANTIFA\u201d and has \u201cdone nothing but attack all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n He later took to Facebook to complain publicly about Sudbury.com\u2019s work on this story. The news organization is \u201cnothing more than members of ANTIFA who run hit pieces on the Freedom Movement,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis is why we need anti-propaganda laws and maybe start adding criminal law to the mix in terms of how reporters ethically report journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n LaFace has a history of opposing the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020, The Sudbury Star reported that LaFace had issued a Facebook threat to paint over a Black Lives Matter mural on Elgin Street<\/a>, which drew the attention of the Greater Sudbury Police Service.<\/p>\n There\u2019s much more to LaFace\u2019s recent online activity that also warrants fact checks.\u00a0Supervised consumption sites are \u201cprofiteering off the backs of addicts\u201d and killing people, he said \u2013 a point he also made at length during an Ontario Party event<\/a> earlier this year, when Sloan stopped by Sudbury for a campaign visit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt kills people, the crime rates shoot up, the overdoses don\u2019t come down, nothing changes, it actually gets worse, the issues get worse by 200 to 400 per cent,\u201d he said during the campaign event, citing an Alberta report on supervised consumption sites as his evidence.<\/p>\n This report is presumably \u201cImpact: A socio-economic review of supervised consumption sites in Alberta<\/a>,\u201d a much-criticized<\/a> 2020 report by the United Conservative Party-appointed Supervised Consumption Services Review Committee. The report cites no deaths on site, but an increase in both crime and deaths around supervised consumption sites in that province.<\/p>\n An article in the peer-reviewed Harm Reduction Journal by St. Mary\u2019s University (Halifax) Criminology professor James D. Livingston refutes the Alberta report<\/a>, noting, \u201cTo date, peer-reviewed research has found no evidence linking supervised consumptions sites to increased crime.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMany of the Report\u2019s findings are incongruent with the evidence contained with the body of peer-reviewed research examining the effectiveness of SCSs for almost two decades,\u201d according to Livingston.<\/p>\n \u201cThe magnitude of methodological flaws in the Report undermine the validity of its criminological claims and raise significant issues with the soundness of its conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n Public Health Sudbury & Districts chief medical officer of health Dr. Penny Sutcliffe defended supervised consumption sites<\/a> last year as a \u201ccritical component of a comprehensive strategy to deal with drugs,\u201d and the downtown Sudbury site recently received federal approval<\/a>.<\/p>\n The start of one of LaFace\u2019s most recent videos begins with him singing, \u201cI\u2019m a $310-million-dollar-man, oh yeah,\u201d in reference to his status as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit<\/a> that targets organizers and participants in the Freedom Convoy to Ottawa.<\/p>\n LaFace was a central organizer for the Northern Ontario leg of the convoy, which tied up a dozen blocks of downtown Ottawa for several days earlier this year. Their presence resulted in businesses shuttering and caused distress among area residents who endured sleepless nights as a result of semi-trucks honking their horns.<\/p>\n \u201cGood luck with that, you ain\u2019t going to get a dime from us, you won\u2019t get a penny, and not one of us will serve time in jail, either,\u201d LaFace said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fellow convoy organizers and class-action lawsuit defendants Tamara Lich<\/a> and Patrick King<\/a> have already spent time in jail.<\/p>\n If he could do it all over again, LaFace said that he would still participate in the convoy to continue \u201cstanding up for the rights and liberties of Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I could do it over, oh man, trust me, there would be some things I\u2019d change to make sure those cops never did nothing to any one of us.\u201d He did not clarify what he meant by this ambiguous statement.<\/p>\n The convoy\u2019s intent in going to Ottawa, he added, was \u201cto get Justin Trudeau arrested and put in jail \u2026 and call an election.\u201d<\/p>\n A short while later and within the same video, LaFace refutes this previous statement when he says, \u201cAm I trying to overthrow the government? I am not.\u201d<\/p>\n LaFace also accuses local politicians of not caring about Canadian citizens as much as they do foreign residents. In response to a link to a CBC story<\/a> about international students in Sudbury living in cramped accommodations (a three-bedroom house was converted into space for 14, it was reported), LaFace lamented that \u201cCanadians do not matter to local politicians,\u201d and \u201conly act on it if it affects special interest groups.\u201d<\/p>\n Critical of Greater Sudbury city council and municipal staff, whom he considers \u201cirresponsible\u201d and said \u201cneed to be babysat,\u201d LaFace also takes aim at the area he\u2019s striving to represent at Queen\u2019s Park by calling it a \u201cshithole.\u201d<\/p>\n The full context of his \u201cshithole\u201d statement was: \u201cThink about this for a second, Sudbury. We have the biggest mines in the world, and look at our shithole. Seriously, we\u2019re the biggest mines in the world, and look about our town falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n In a separate post targetting people who are transgender, LaFace writes: \u201cThe extreme, neo communist left insists by any means necessary that everyone bend to their will. Centralized management of the economy, rampant cultural marxism with transgender 7 year olds, men competing in women’s sports, taxes for the weather, destruction of the middle class, confiscation of firearms, abolition of free speech and expression. Personally, I would quite seriously rather die than live in the world they envision.\u201dDuring Sloan\u2019s visit earlier this month, LaFace claimed that everything people read about him online is \u201call lies.\u201d<\/p>\n More recently, he said this week that he doesn\u2019t care what people have to say about him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t give a shit,\u201d he said in a recent video. \u201cOur entire country\u2019s been attacked by left-wing idiots. They\u2019re nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this week, LaFace appeared to care a great deal about what Sudbury.com had to say.\u00a0He denied he was served a legal document related to the Freedom Convoy class-action lawsuit, so Sudbury.com obtained a signed affidavit through class-action lawsuit lawyer Paul Champ. This document affirmed that LaFace was served at his Levack home on May 14 at 8:40 p.m.<\/p>\n LaFace issued Sudbury.com the following email in response to being confronted with this information and the allegation that he was not being truthful: \u201cI was not served and who the f\u2013k are you to state I wasn’? (sic) Cuz some low life gave u a note? F\u2013k off Tyler and moving forward Sudbury dot c-m can go f\u2013k yourselves ya little bitches \u2026 Cuz all you f\u2013ks do is run hit pieces … Bunch of antifa c\u2013ts.\u201d<\/p>\n In one of his recent videos, LaFace said that rather than criticize him, people should follow his lead and take the high ground.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t go looking out to start bashing people because I don\u2019t agree with their opinion or whatever. I don\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Sudbury.com has reached out to Ontario Party headquarters to get their reaction to LaFace\u2019s recent online activity, but have not received a response. In a post on his Facebook page, LaFace states Sloan \u201cknows about everything bud, i made sure of it.\u201d<\/p>\n However, LaFace\u2019s recent online comments don\u2019t appear to stray too far from those shared during the party\u2019s campaign event in Sudbury earlier this month, where Sloan pledged to fight for \u201cFaith, family and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n He argued against vaccine mandates, which he referred to as \u201cmedical tyranny,\u201d and legislation that outlaws discrimination against people who are transgender.<\/p>\n Sloan said he opposes \u201cindoctrinating concepts like radical gender ideology and critical race theory.\u201d<\/p>\n Critical race theory<\/a> is an intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists that examines the intersection of race, society and law. It is not part of the school curriculum.<\/p>\n The World Economic Forum \u201cwants to merge humans with machines,\u201d Sloan claimed. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to control people when they have this kind of apparatus.\u201d<\/p>\n World Economic Forum executive chair Klaus Schwab did comment<\/a> about microchipping humans in 2016, and wrote an article<\/a> about it the previous year, but did so while highlighting its potential benefits and risks.\u00a0LaFace takes a swipe at Schwab and a handful of others in a recent Facebook post he shared. It includes the words, \u201cYour enemy is not in Russia,\u201d alongside images of Schwab, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Theresa Tam and other perceived threats.<\/p>\n Advance voting<\/a> for this year\u2019s provincial election is underway. Ballots can also be cast on the June 2 election day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Voters can determine their voting location by plugging in their postal code here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n