Liberals mock vaccine injury inquiry after years of blocking COVID probe
Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen is under fire for mocking a parliamentary hearing where Canadians say they'll finally get to tell their vaccine injury stories.
Author: Alex Dhaliwal
The Liberals spent years blocking a full public inquiry into Canada’s pandemic response—now Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen is drawing fire for mocking an inquiry that will hear testimony from Canadians who say they suffered life-altering COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
The Kingston and the Islands MP mocked the inquiry’s name and questioned its legitimacy in a video posted online.
“This one’s called the Allison Inquiry. He named it after himself. That just reeks of attention seeking before anything else,” Gerretsen said.
Although Gerretsen acknowledged that Canadians who suffered vaccine injuries deserve compassion and the opportunity to be heard, he argued the hearings are really about promoting Conservative grievances over vaccine mandates and the Freedom Convoy rather than uncovering facts.
Allison wasted little time responding.
“You’re invited to the Allison Inquiry to hear from COVID-19 vaccine-injured folks tell their story,” the West Niagara MP wrote.
“They deserve to be heard and we, as representatives of the people, owe it to them.”
The four-day hearings, scheduled for Sept. 8-11 on Parliament Hill, are open to MPs from every political party.
“It’s a non-partisan event. All parties are invited. You got my personal email invitation on July 7th. Can I consider you RSVP’ed?” Allison wrote, before adding: “BTW, real courageous of you restricting your Facebook comments.”
The exchange has renewed attention on the Liberal government’s long-running refusal to hold a comprehensive public inquiry into Canada’s pandemic response.
On Oct. 23, 2023, the Trudeau government rejected demands for an independent inquiry, opting instead for a closed-door review led by Health Canada advisers.
At the same time, Health Canada refused to release 21 completed internal audits examining the federal COVID response, despite the reviews identifying shortcomings, including a lack of “clear understanding” of critical pandemic data.
Even New Democrat MP Don Davies called for an “impartial, independent, public and properly resourced inquiry,” arguing only a formal inquiry could compel government officials to testify under oath.
Parliament later passed Bill C-293 after MPs voted down provisions that would have required mandatory federal reviews of pandemic governance, replacing the idea of an independent inquiry with an advisory committee.
Conservative MP Ted Falk argued Canadians will never get real answers if the same ministers who oversaw the pandemic are reviewing their own decisions.
“Canadians will never get the answers they deserve if the ministers who perpetuated or promoted many of the failures, abuses and violations of Charter rights... are the same ones tasked with reviewing their own government’s response,” Falk said.
A Federal Court judge reached a similar conclusion while dismissing a sweeping lawsuit over Canada’s pandemic response, ruling the courts were not a substitute for a public inquiry because such questions belonged before an independent commission.
Canada boasted a higher death rate than other industrialized nations, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center, but considerably less than pandemic models anticipated.
Moreover, Allison argues Canada has become an outlier among democratic countries.
More than 30 countries—including several G7 and Commonwealth nations—have conducted inquiries into COVID-19 mandates, vaccines, civil liberties and government decision-making.
“They undertook them because their citizens deserve answers,” Allison previously said.
His parliamentary inquiry also comes amid continued controversy surrounding Canada’s vaccine injury compensation program.
A five-month Global News investigation alleged widespread mismanagement, while Ottawa earlier this year transferred responsibility for the renamed Vaccine Impact Assistance Program to the Public Health Agency of Canada following mounting complaints and backlogs.
Federal figures show the program received 3,557 claims between Jun. 2021 and Nov. 2025, with only 252 approved for compensation worth $21.47 million.
Health Canada has also recorded approximately 58,000 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, including more than 11,000 classified as serious.
The renewed debate also comes after a string of revelations about Ottawa’s pandemic response, including sealed internal audits, secret confidentiality pledges signed by senior public health officials, the deletion of public records detailing billions in COVID contracts, unused ventilator purchases worth hundreds of millions of dollars and repeated criticism from medical organizations that Canada entered the pandemic unprepared.
For Allison, however, the immediate objective is simpler: to give Canadians who believe they were harmed by COVID-19 vaccines a chance to tell their stories publicly after years of feeling ignored.
“The individuals sharing their experiences are not statistics,” Allison said when launching the inquiry. “They’re our mothers, our fathers, our sons, our daughters, our friends and our neighbours. Their experiences deserve to be documented, examined, and understood.”