As the medical system’s rally against our recent Not Guilty verdict spreads to the national level, it highlights that their trumped up charges against us were not just for the sake of covering up their wrong doing on the provincial level, but that the entire medical establishment was literally banking on the precedent that would be set through our wrongful conviction. A wrongful conviction that would serve to compel parents to needlessly seek out medical attention and subject their children to unsafe and unproven vaccinations through fear of criminal prosecution.

With the Judge’s recent decision and the precedent that was established over the past few months of court proceedings, things have backfired on a catastrophic level. Not only was Alberta Health Services exposed for causing the death of our son, Ezekiel… but the charges of “failing to provide the necessaries of life” were further clarified in that the crown now has to prove that allopathic medical attention would actually make a difference, before parents can be convicted for not seeking it out as their first line of treatment. This is an incredible victory for all parents in Canada! Conversely, this is an incredible loss for, and will greatly hurt the bottomline profits of, both the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry alike, as they are intrinsically connected at the hip.

Since our acquittal, many industry players have come out of the wood work and used their connections with the media to attack the Judge, while grossly misrepresenting the events that led up to Ezekiel’s death in an attempt to sway public opinion. When out of desperation, the racist card was played by 42 “professionals” in the week following our acquittal, we began calling them out for attempting to set the stage for an appeal. The baseless claims of these “professionals” would not only incite vitriol in the public against the Alberta Judiciary as well as Collet and I, but it would also serve to create a divide amongst legal experts, drawing out well informed expert opinions that identified that the Judge had a duty to address the issues of poor communication in his decision, and that it had nothing to do with him being racist. One would think that these opinions would’ve also been made available to the public through various media channels. However, this proved not to be the case as they hardly saw the light of day and the public was supplied with a one sided story that was fraught with conjecture and error.

Surrounding the integrity of these “professionals” who rendered such accusations against the Judge in an attempt to discredit his decision… What wasn’t disclosed to the public by these “professionals” (Juliet Guichon and crew) is that a number of them come out of, or are directly affiliated with, the same institutions that are now liable both civilly and criminally for the death of Ezekiel (namely the University of Calgary’s Alberta Children’s Hospital and Alberta Health Services). As such, it would be reasonable to believe that these “professionals” are just carrying on the attempts of covering up the true cause of death of Ezekiel while furthering their own self serving agendas. These are major details that these “professionals” should’ve disclosed, prior to subjecting the public to their biased information that would lead their audience to draw ill informed conclusions on a topic that directly affects the rights of every Canadian when it comes to parental rights and medical choice.

Just when we thought that the attacks were as dirty as they could get… we discovered that Dr. Linda LeBlanc, who resides clear on the other side of Canada, started a petition that would be submitted to both the Alberta Crown as well as the Canadian Judicial Council, pressuring for an appeal to be made as well as a conviction against Collet and I. She obtained just over 2600 signatures before she claimed victory as the Crown declared that they were going to appeal our acquittal and seek to have it made into a conviction at the Alberta Appeals Court. How did she obtain these 2600 signatures? Through the blatant misrepresentation of the facts to a degree that we have never seen before, and in some instances, by even adding some fictional events of her own creation. Two clear examples of her fabricating evidence directly associated with convincing others to sign her petition, is when she stated that, “The child had been ill for a month…”, when in reality he was off and on sick over the time period of 2 weeks, 1 day and a few hours. Another instance is when she stated, “The judge ascertained that the child died because of lack of oxygen in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.” In contradiction, she would go on to state that, “The child in fact died of overwhelming sepsis secondary to meningitis…”. Nowhere in any medical evidence or in any testimony given over nearly 7 years of court proceedings did anyone state that there was any evidence of sepsis, let alone “overwhelming sepsis”. In fact to the contrary, 24 hours after Ezekiel had arrived at hospital, the doctors were looking for an alternative cause of death as the CT scan had ruled out meningitis (however the radiologist did identify brain damage due to hypoxic injury (oxygen deprivation within the ambulance)) and further to this, there was no objective evidence of an infection (sepsis). Not only is she entirely wrong, but it will be interesting to find out what kind of legal liability there will be in relation to the intentional creation and misrepresentation of facts for the sole purpose of generating public pressure to influence court proceedings? Mark my words, this is definitely not the last time that we will hear about Dr. Linda LeBlanc out of Moncton, New Brunswick.

Even though the media has attempted to make these small baseless claims seem far more grandiose than they actually are, a greater threat appears to be looming on the horizon. As of this past Wednesday, the Canadian Medical Association decided to weigh in on our case by publishing the article found below in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The significance of this and why it should be of concern is that according to the CMA, their objectives, as listed on their website, are thus:
“The CMA unites physicians to take action on health issues that matter — to our members and Canadians — building quality care for patients and a vibrant medical profession.”
The questions that need to be asked is what is the CMA, Canada’s largest association of medical Doctors, looking to achieve by alerting their 75,000 members about our case? Through uniting physicians, what action are they looking to incite by showcasing the following 2 questionable individuals:
Dr. Linda LeBlanc who, through fraudulent means, just achieved 2600 signatures on a petition that has served to influence our court proceedings that could further monopolize the medical system while criminalizing natural medicine?
Juliet Guichon, who has a long standing history with our case, as well as a history with the CMA as she became the recipient of both the CMA’s Medal of Honour, and the Canadian Public Health Association’s National Public Health Hero Award for the prestigious work that she did in ramming the HPV vaccine down the throats of every Catholic school board who, for religious reasons, refused to offer it. She too, has played a role in influencing our court proceedings as she is one of the key individuals who made the accusation of racism against the judge and used her connection to CBC to author an article that also deceived the public through her crafty distortions of the truth.
If the CMA’s efforts are successful in unduly influencing the outcome of our court case, this would purely from an economical standpoint, assist in “building a vibrant medical profession” as stated in the CMA’s objectives above.

Beginning right from the headline to the very last statement, the CMAJ article is misleading and fraught with deception. Tactics that have been all too often employed surrounding the death of our son, ultimately in an effort to divide and conquer for the purpose of ushering us into a brave new world of medical tyranny. The very headline stating that this is about “protecting children from parental negligence”, couldn’t be any further from the truth. If this was about protecting children from negligence, why is there no mention whatsoever of the criminal negligence that AHS engaged in when they proactively removed the intubation equipment from their ambulances that was necessary for the paramedics to save small children? Crickets…. Further to this, there is nothing evidentiary within all of the court proceedings that would establish the death of our son as a case of negligence. In fact, this is what the Judge in 2016 had to say even after the most damning evidence that the crown had was presented to him. “Well, I mean, the interesting thing about this case, is some ways, it’s the opposite of what you’d normally expect to see on this kind of a situation. This kind of a situation, you’d almost expect to see parents that were not attentive and then say, well, what they did or failed to do, how does it measure up against the objective standard. But everything we know about the Stephans so far, that the jury knows, is that they’re exactly the opposite. They’re attentive. They’re caring. They’re loving. That’s what it is, so it’s a very unique case; isn’t it?” Justice Jerke was right in that it was a very unique case. In fact it was the first case of its kind within Canada. Fast forward almost exactly 3 years later to March 2019 and you will find the Associate Chief Justice of Alberta emphatically stating that – this is not a case of negligence that brings the Stephans before the courts. But rather this is a case regarding choice of care – Choice of care?? Why would the Canadian Medical Association have any interest in influencing the court proceedings of a case that is fundamentally based on choice of care? Surely they couldn’t stand to profit off of Canada’s most publicized case wherein the media has pitted allopathic medicine against natural medicine.

As all of the players continue to emerge from the shadows, the agenda behind these court proceedings becomes clearer. An agenda that is far greater than we had previously thought. One for which the establishment so desperately clings to, that even in the face of defeat, has escalated their tactics to playing the racist card and attacking the Judicial system. This is a precedent that one way or the other, will not be exclusive to Canada. By the Crown appealing our acquittal and the positive elements that were established throughout our court proceedings, they are granting us the opportunity to elevate this established case law to a higher court, thus giving it greater authority in the various courts across Canada. Case law that by nature, protects the rights of parents and ensures that medical choice is maintained.

Through God, all things are possible. Even though it appears that we are outnumbered, out resourced and greatly disadvantaged in having our voices heard, we have come to see over the last 7 years that truly all things are possible through God. As such, we are petitioning you the reader, that if you have love for the God given inalienable rights that are naturally endowed upon all of us, that you join with us in standing for the truth in protection of family, parental and medical rights.

Recently coming out of court proceedings that dragged out over 3.5 months, we are still $30,000 in debt for lawyer bills. Our last appeal in 2016-2017 cost us $250,000. We anticipate that this appeal will be a fair bit cheaper, albeit this is still a battle that we can neither afford or win on our own. We only have about half a year to raise the necessary funds that will definitely exceed $150,000. Though the future court costs may seem insurmountable, in reflecting back on the over one million dollars that these proceedings have already cost us… we know that it is possible with your help to come up with a small fraction of that in this short period of time. If you are not able to financially assist us, please assist us by sharing this article with all those you know as well as standing with us in praying that the truth may prevail!

David Stephan

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Click here for the full CMAJ article