Randy Hillier Is An Opportunist Clown, We Should Take Him Seriously
COVID-19 lockdown conspiracy theorist and MPP of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston Randy Hillier keeps making the news for his flagrant and intentional ignorance of the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions put in place to mitigate it, much to the chagrin of the populace and at least 116 physicians. As such, he and his family have been pulling headlines from news networks for the past few months.
Randy is an independent now, but the only reason for that is he was expelled from the PC caucus for saying “yada yada yada” while the parent of a child with autism was speaking. Cheers presumably went up from the populace when he was booted, but he wasn’t done with us, and as with many other grifters in the right-wing of Canada’s politics, he has made his name off of fighting the supposed “police-state” of lockdown measures.
Taking this loon seriously is a task we are ill-prepared for, but with the flutter of Canadian politicians just straight up leaving the country for whatever reasons, and the fact that the incompetently communicated restrictions imposed by Doug Ford’s government may not be enough, this presents Hillier a position that we should all be careful not to dismiss. Current restrictions are inadequate, we all have pandemic fatigue, and our politicians aren’t following the restrictions they recommend of us… that’s where Randy Hillier comes in.
Any thinking that Hillier is an outlier and worth ignoring should be tempered. After all, it was entirely possible that Randy could at one point have been the man in charge of the PC Party of Ontario. Though we may laugh at the absurdity that Randy and his ilk propose, its impossible to deny the temptation of “normalcy” that they promise, and with the rise in Canadians looking to the south for inspiration, the reality of far-right actors in our politics should be addressed. So let’s start with the far-right MPP in our backyard.
After a quick Google, its easy to see that the man is currently off the deep end. An email from a supposed nurse working in the Ontario Health System simply signed “Andrew” is posted on his site, as full proof that the hospital load in Ontario is manufactured, because it wasn’t that busy in his hospital.
Despite the fact that this could literally be anybody sending Randy this email, as it turns out, around November of last year, the CBC ran a story addressing this. The answer for this is that ospitals at the time were even worse in terms of capacity, despite the relatively low cases of COVID patients. The answer for this is simple, unlike other treatable patients, you can’t keep patients suffering from an incredibly contagious disease in the hallways of a hospital.
Of course, this was last November and December, before cases rose dramatically. As it stands right now hospitals are now deciding how to approach choosing who lives or dies now that their capacity has hit crucial levels.
Randy also has a YouTube channel, where he pushes his COVID narrative. Even in watching one of the more palatable videos of his, where he interviews a Dr. Amani about “The Deadliness of COVID Isolation” (an effect that, admittedly, should be researched), it is an exercise in patience. He begins by saying two thirds of deaths in Canada from COVID are in long term care homes, and that someone personally wrote to him that 3–4 of their relatives died in a LTC “…from or with COVID, we don’t know”.
A true and horrible reality, and I would commend him for acknowledging it, if it were not for the wishy-washy comments about COVID’s role in their death. That commendation would quickly become revoked though, when he and the Doctor go on to spend the rest of the video speaking about the supposed effects of lockdowns. Dr. Amani begins not with statistics, studies, or medical research, but with an anecdotal story on her father, discussing the effect the lockdown had on him, Hillier then compares it to solitary confinement. Dr. Amani then tells another story of a friend’s mother who lost “40 lbs” and died from isolation, coupled with “on the Twitter lands… a 94-year-old was dancing at the night clubs… three times a week… died from isolation measures, not COVID.”
You’ll forgive me for not taking an anecdote and a story from “The Twitter Lands” as compelling evidence. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that isolation doesn’t have a physical and mental effect on the body, and it may be entirely possible that Dr. Amani’s personal story was true. However, with the endless cry of low mortality rates of COVID in this sphere that Hillier champions, Amani, curiously does not have any figures to compare it with isolation. This means that she is weighing one death over countless others, suggesting that lifting lockdown measures would be worth allowing all these LTC deaths they openly admitted were happening. Randy then delivers an exemplary line that displays his lack of self-awareness with (what I imagines he believes is) a powerful call to action “This is another exceptionally puzzling part… how is it that so many in society… we’ve just lost all empathy for the elderly.”
Considering how 40% of LTC homes have outbreaks of COVID, and since January 1st, 198 residents and two staff members have died from the disease. I would ask Randy that same question.
“on the Twitter lands… a 94-year-old was dancing at the night clubs… three times a week… died from isolation measures, not COVID.”- Dr. Amani, interview with Randy Hillier
But who is this Dr. Amani? While I could not find too concrete a profile on the Dr., a quick scroll of her Twitter feed showed that she enjoys retweeting accounts that spread misinformation.
It is true that Dr. Jerry L. Spivak said the COVID vaccine had a hand in this man’s death. He also said it will be very rare and it should not stop people from vaccinating.
By the way, the account she retweeted is the “Children’s Health Defense”, an anti-vaxx organization.
That’s not to mention that this Doctor (who is a real doctor) has a Twitter feed filled with stuff like this:
It should also be noted that this was the top comment on the video at time of watching:
So what little “evidence” Randy has been spreading about COVID-19 and lockdowns is paper-thin. This, of course, should be no surprise, but his views still attract those who believe we are living in “Satanist Marxist times”. As someone who knows a Satanist who is Marxist-adjacent, they would be overjoyed to live in the same reality this person seems to.
But a further peek into the MPP shows the politics he holds at his core. The latest post on his website at time of writing appears to be a request sent to the FBI to look into scientific fraud. Claiming that China, and Xi Jinping in particular, is responsible for world wide lockdown measures, CC’ing intelligence agencies from Canada, Germany, Australia and the U.K.
Ignoring the obvious incredulity of this suggestion, let’s address the main thesis. Even if it were true that China and Xi Jinping created the concept of “lockdowns” (which it absolutely is not), what, exactly, is the problem? That China handled their COVID outbreaks with lockdowns, and the rest of the world saw what a good job it did? While they are not a permanent solution, lockdowns work to contain the virus, if people can afford to stay home. This of course is Randy’s main point on the COVID pandemic, that lockdowns are not worth the lives they save. But assigning their implementation to the Chinese head of state shows how the far-right weaponizes their positions to prop up jingoistic hysteria.
The troubles extend even further, to a mere issue of constructing this request. At first glance, it is strange that he would send this document to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a domestic intelligence agency, CC’ing other western nation’s intelligence agencies and not the Central Intelligence Agency, whom this would need to be sent to, instead of the FBI.
I would do a deep dive into this document, but the fact that in the opening pages it suggests that lockdowns are a creation by Xi Jinping that have never been attempted in the history of the world means you can never expect me to do it for free.
A better understanding of the man and his politics requires us to delve into his positions pre-pandemic. This yields some interesting results. As many of us know, in early 2020, Indigenous Protestors in Canada set up railway blockades to protest the Coastal GasLink Pipeline planned on Wet’suwet’en Land. It may surprise you to hear that after this, Randy called for a Standing Committee on Indigenous Relations to be created.
“It is past time that we create a Standing Committee on Indigenous Relations in this House; a Standing Committee where Indigenous peoples may be heard, policies examined, and deliberated with solutions found.”
Applause for this proposal should be held however, as this committee would presumably not be to resolve the blockade in the way called for, allowing the Indigenous protestors affected to change what they would like. I say this because in that call for a Committee, it refers to Randy’s statement on the blockades themselves, which are… less than admirable.
“These groups have hijacked our charitable dispositions, successfully stifled our freedom of speech through coercive political correctness, distorted our education, rewritten our history, abused freedom of assembly, caused financial harm and grave disruptions to our economy, while seeking to impoverish and lower the standards of all Canadians regardless of their ancestry. They seek to prevent the Indigenous peoples from sharing in the fruits of a modern society while enshrining their dependence onto a welfare state.”
This statement also claims that we live in a society, because people use their phones and roads they shouldn’t protest (yes, really) he also claims the terms “colonizer” and “settler” are pejoratives. Despite being accurate statements of Canada as a government and its citizens. So while the abolishment of the Indian Act is a noble goal, we must question the intentions in which Hillier proposes it.
Beyond this recent uptick in coverage, it seems that Randy has not been a big name in politics, Conservative or otherwise. Sure, he’s penned a letter describing his love of politics being reignited after the PC Caucus kicked him out, which begins more like a “I broke up with them, not the other way around” relationship Facebook post. But apart from that and a hilariously titled post penned under the Wynne government, there isn’t much here. The deputy premier in 2009 even said of him at the time of his leadership candidacy “[H]e’s barely made a mark or had a presence around here.”
…while the abolishment of the Indian Act is a noble goal, we must question the intentions in which Hillier proposes it.
However, these facts should not dull his threat, in terms of his far-right politics. He was once President at Lanark Landowners Association, a property rights organization, which sent a picture of a bullet-riddled deer labeled “Leona” to Queen’s Park, a direct reference to Leona Dombrowsky, who was then a Liberal Agriculture Minister. Yes, his COVID activism is silly, but unfortunately, it’s spreading. Doug Ford just kicked an MPP who voiced similar calls to end lockdown, which Randy predictably lauded.
We should take the lessons we’ve learned from the fascist problem brewing in the United States. Media should stop giving him news coverage, and if they do, they need to frame every one of his claims against the reality of the situation. We need to call for material benefits for those suffering under the pandemic. Nationalize long term care homes, and punish those responsible for its failures. Freeze rent and mortgage payments, pay people to stay home and forgive CERB repayments.
Randy Hillier is fueling his fire of extremism with the mishandling of the pandemic. The only way to put out the flames, is to handle the pandemic better.
Scott Pinkerton is a writer for The Beaverton, and runs the YouTube channel Pinko Punko. He can be found on Twitter.
