{"id":5715,"date":"2021-02-01T00:16:52","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T05:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=5715"},"modified":"2021-02-01T00:21:30","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T05:21:30","slug":"mask-exempt-parksville-customer-goes-on-hunger-strike-after-pharmasave-denies-prescription","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=5715","title":{"rendered":"Mask-exempt Parksville customer goes on HUNGER STRIKE after Pharmasave denies prescription http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=5715"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/a>Watch<\/a>    Listen<\/a>    Take Action<\/a>Shop<\/a>   Donate<\/a> <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mask-exempt Parksville customer goes on HUNGER STRIKE after Pharmasave denies prescription<\/strong>

Remember when discriminating against people based on their medical, physical, and cognitive conditions was a bad thing?\u00a0I miss those days. Back before mask mandates, lockdowns, and snitch lines were a thing. It\u2019s all but a distant memory now. These days, it seems like it\u2019s the \u201cnew normal\u201d to discriminate against people if their health condition makes them mask-exempt.\u00a0

That\u2019s precisely what happened to Ela Tanase, a Parksville, B.C., resident who was\u00a0refused service at a Pharmasave when she went in without a mask<\/strong>\u00a0to pick up her pain medication.\u00a0\u00a0Ela is mask exempt because of an underlying health issue, and as per B.C.\u2019s human rights laws, she\u2019s not required to divulge what that issue is to justify her mask exemption.\u00a0But that didn\u2019t matter to Pharmasave. They refused to listen and kicked her out of the store!

\u00a0If that wasn\u2019t humiliating enough, the police were called, and when they arrived,\u00a0they issued Ela a $230 ticket.\u00a0<\/strong>It wasn\u2019t until\u00a0Ela embarked on a 6-day hunger strike<\/strong>\u00a0that her pharmacy finally relented and allowed her to pick up her medication!\\<\/u><\/strong><\/a>
Isn\u2019t it ironic that a place that is supposed to help citizens with their medical needs is the same place ignoring their medical mask exemption?\u00a0Why bother outlining mask exemptions in the law if it can just be ignored?\u00a0<\/strong>

Lucky for Ela, she doesn\u2019t have to worry about paying that ticket. We set her up with one of our top-notch lawyers to challenge her citation.Hiring lawyers to defend a $230 ticket may sound strange, considering it will cost way more to fight the ticket than to simply pay it off. But this isn\u2019t about the money\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it\u2019s about standing up for what\u2019s right<\/strong>\u00a0and sending a message that Canadian civil liberties are worth defending.\u00a0<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n